


The Sister in the Door

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Series: The Vampire in the Special Agent [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Bones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Seeley Booth is Angel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 78,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: The discovery of a body from Booth's past on the Jeffersonian's doorstep forces Booth to confront a nightmare that he thought he would never have to face again, as the 'squint squad' come face-to-face with a world they never imagined existed
Relationships: Angel/Temperance Brennan, Seeley Booth/Temperance Brennan
Series: The Vampire in the Special Agent [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904407
Kudos: 14





	1. Evil Awakes

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own what you recognise; the usual kind of drill for this sort of thing, really
> 
> Feedback: If you have something to say, say it
> 
> 1: For reference, this is set in the same reality as my story "Angel of the Bones", looking at the events of "Bones" based on the idea that Seeley Booth was once Angel and begins around Season Five- "Angel of the Bones" only covers everything up to the end of Season Four, and the specific details of the episodes won't change-; precise details about the timing of the story are unimportant, save for the fact that this takes place _before_ "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole", and I'll probably ignore anything involving Brennan dating Hacker (That man so rarely showed up in the series he's not worth bothering about; we don't even know when they _broke up_ , for crying out loud!)
> 
> 2: Exact details about what they're facing here will be revealed soon; this chapter's just intended to set the scene more than anything else

The entity in the warehouse had spent so long without a concept of time that most people would argue that it would have long ago mastered patience to an art form, but when dealing with an entity that by its very nature would _never_ be known for its virtues, that was extremely unlikely.

After its last defeat had made it impractical for it to attempt something on the same kind of scale as its last plan any time soon, it had decided to focus its energies on a slightly smaller target to 'replenish' itself, and had quickly managed to track down the one thing it needed at this point; an old enemy, in a position where he would be particularly vulnerable to its kind of assault...

 _Especially_ , the creature reflected as it studied the open area in front of it, a satisfied smirk on its current face as it felt the energy of its minions' latest spell beginning to gather before it, _when I'm pitting him against_ this _old adversary_...

The effort involved in getting the other man here was difficult, of course- more than one of its followers would almost certainly lose their lives generating the required amount of energy for the plan to succeed-, but it couldn't afford to be concerned about that kind of thing right now; for this to work properly, it was going to need the one man who knew its target _perfectly_...

Then, as it watched, the same smirk still on its face as the energy continued to escalate and increase, the power being generated tore a hole in the air, and the form of the man it had been seeking fell to the ground with a loud roar of agony and pain.

"Ah, you made it," the person responsible said, walking over to crouch down beside the new arrival with a nonchalant smile. "Everything fine with you?"

As its new agent looked up, a feral glare on his face that made it clear that he would be attacking the other being if he could, his 'benefactor' nodded in satisfaction.

Even time in Hell couldn't curb this man's killer instinct, and that was _before_ he knew who he was here to hunt; he had _unquestionably_ made the right choice in selecting this man.

The only issue now to was ensure that he chose the right people to send the right 'message' to his targets before the time was right for them to learn just who they were up against...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, I know, but it's mainly intended to establish the current scenario; next chapter jumps to a couple of weeks after these events


	2. The Squints in the Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's mainly a dream sequence of Booth's, but you'll realise what it means later

_For a moment, as he stood at the end of the corridor, he wondered where he was; the lights were dark, but he_ knew _he recognised this place from somewhere, and the woman in front of him looked vaguely familiar, even if she seemed to change from moment to moment..._

" _If you have a message for me,_ tell _me!" the woman said, in a voice that somehow sounded like two people were speaking without actually having that happening..._

" _Well, it's not really the kind of message you tell," he said, apparently unconcerned about the anomalous nature of the person he was addressing._

" _It sort of involves finding the bodies of all your friends," he continued, his hand tightening around the throat of the red-haired girl in his hands..._

" _Let_ go _of me, Studly!" the woman said in exasperation._

What the...? _Booth thought, looking in confusion at the girl in his arms; the girl who_ should _have been a shy redhead in a simple outfit was now wearing a loose yet form-fitting dark green top and tight black jeans, curly black hair massed around her head..._

_..._

" _That's not a great question," he said, standing nonchalantly in his cage as Doctor Jack Hodgins sat on the other side of the bars opposite him, a grim expression on the entomologist's face that he wasn't used to seeing. "Not even an insightful question. Not a Hodgins-worthy question-"_

" _If you're going to insult me, it won't work," Hodgins countered. "I_ know _you, remember?"_

" _Yeah, and I know you too, Jacky-boy," he replied, still as casual as though they were exchanging debates over a bar table rather than through iron bars. "We all want something, Jacks; it's the way of the world, after all."_

" _And what is it that you think I want?"Hodgins asked._

" _You want to come down here, find out what I know, how you can use it to play the big hero-"_

" _I want to know what we're dealing with; it doesn't have anything to do with being the hero," Hodgins countered grimly._

" _Sure it does, but why now?" he countered. "Can't be because there's an apocalypse coming; once you get into this line of work, there's always one of_ those _around the corner."_

" _Enlighten me," Hodgins retaliated._

" _You want to impress the girl," he said, walking up towards the cage to lean slightly forward as he addressed the other man, a nonchalant smirk on his face. "Move in, get her to love you back again, and after a few days, bend her over the examination table-"_

" _Are you really trying to rattle me with_ this _?" Hodgins asked, rolling his eyes in mock exasperation._

" _What sucked more, huh?" he asked. "That she left_ you _, or that she went back to her ex-_ girl _friend afterwards? Not only couldn't you keep her, there's gotta be a part of you that wondered... were you really_ so _bad that you turned her_ that _off the idea of being with a guy?"_

" _Congratulations; you found a weak spot and poked at it," Hodgins said dismissively. "Can we move on now?"_

" _Funny thing, really," he continued, still smirking in amusement at his friend's obvious discomfort, "you know you're not fooling anyone, right? New clothes, haircut, time in the gym- you're still the same loser none of the other kids wanted to sit with at lunch."_

" _And I'm out here while you're locked up," was all that Hodgins had to point out at that comment._

" _So?" he said (He wouldn't admit that Hodgins had a point; things happened sometimes, and the true test was how you coped when they did). "You've got no leverage. What are you going to do; kill me?"_

" _If you want to waste my time, you can rot down here," Hodgins said, as he stood up to walk away._

" _Nice stamina, 'Hodgy'," he spat after the man's retreating back. "No wonder Angela's not interested. Is this the part where I'm supposed to get defensive, start talking to prove you wrong? What else you got?"_

_Hodgins said nothing in response, but even the cold stare he sent in the direction of the cage gave him everything he needed to know; he'd verbally outmanoeuvred the other man._

_..._

" _And teacher makes three," he said, smirking as he hurled a computer into the wall, turning to look at the well-built form of the shocked Max Keenan, staring back at him with anxious, terrified eyes; even a killer like Max clearly knew enough to know when he was up against a more ruthless, dangerous predator..._

_..._

_Ducking under a swinging board, he punched Jared- dressed in a red shirt and leather coat that his 'new' sibling would never have worn of his own accord- in the chin, following it up with a blow to the stomach that knocked him to the floor of the car park where they were currently trading blows._

" _Oh, so_ now _it's all different because you're Mr Special Agent Guy, huh?" Jared countered, board in hand as he glared mockingly at the other man. "What's next?"_

" _Right now," he said, leaping up to grab a pipe and kicking out at his opponent's chest, "I'm just focusing on kicking your ass."_

_As Jared leapt back to his feet, stabbing away at Angel with the beam in his hands, he dodged around the attempted assault for the first few moments before kicking his 'brother' long enough to take the beam._

" _Duking it out?" he said, looking sceptically at the other man. "_ This _was your big plan?"_

" _Hey!"his opponent yelled. "I had a plan!"_

" _You?" he said mockingly, after the next attempted attack culminated in him trapping Jared on top of a nearby car. "A plan?"_

" _A good plan," Jared countered through gritted teeth. "Smart, carefully laid out... but I got bored."_

_With that, a punch to the face threw him off-balance long enough for Jared to pin him to the wall with the beam he'd been using earlier._

" _All that watching, waiting..." Jared said, shaking his head dismissively. "My legs started to cramp... and enough with the hit'n'quip-"_

" _Couldn't agree more," he countered, allowing his true self to come through as he unleashed a rapid series of punches against his foe, culminating in him slamming him against the nearest wall, a stake appearing almost automatically in his hand as he rammed it through his opponent's chest..._

_..._

" _If I decided to walk into her room," he said as they stood in the hospital corridor, looking pointedly at the handsome, suit-clad form of ex-Special-Agent Tim 'Sully' Sullivan, a sadistic smirk on his lips that a part of him was ashamed to admit he felt like giving the other man as well, "do you think for one microsecond that you could stop me?"_

" _Maybe not," Sully replied, staring back at him. "_ _Maybe that security guard couldn't either. Or those cops... or the orderlies... But I'm kind of curious to find out. You game_ _?"_

_He couldn't stop a sense of smug satisfaction at the expression on the other man's face; he knew that he had no chance, and here he was, standing there as resolutely as anything..._

" _The white knight..." he said, glaring mockingly at Sully as he leaned in. "It must just eat you up that I got there first."_

_With that, he grabbed Sully's head in his arms and twisted it, sending the body falling to the ground with a satisfying 'crack'..._

_..._

" _Back off!" Cam yelled, dressed in a casual yellow sleeveless top and brandishing a bottle of water in his face in a threatening manner._

" _What are you going to do?" he asked, staring mockingly at the 'weapon' in front of him. "Melt me?"  
_

" _One more step and you'll find out," Cam countered, her tone still strong despite the obvious fear she felt at the current situation. "You think this is just water?"_

_"You're bluffing," he said dismissively; Cam didn't even think like that.  
_

" _Am I?" Cam countered, her stance firm as she stared at him. "You don't think I wasn't ready for this, do you? That I hadn't prepared for it? Why do you think I have a stake stashed in my desk, a cross in my bag? I think about this happening_ every single day _!"  
_

" _That's just drinking water," he scoffed as he studied the water in her hand._

_"Fresh from a mountain spring, delivered right to our door, then blessed every second Tuesday by Father Mackie, the local parish priest, while you're down in the Bat-cave, sleeping through the better part of the day," Cam countered, her tone a cold, neutral one that gave no indication about her current emotional state. "You don't believe-?"_

_He grabbed her wrists mid-sentence and twisted, the bottle that she'd been holding falling to the ground as her wrists snapped._

" _I really don't," he said over her screams of pain, before he lunged forward and bit into her throat..._

_..._

" _Now that's everything, huh?" he said, standing over the still, shaking form of Doctor Temperance 'Bones' Brennan, the two of them the only people left in the small vine-covered courtyard of a mansion he'd left behind himself long ago, a sword casually swinging from his hand as he studied her shaken form. "No weapons... no friends... no_ family _... no hope."_

_He drew the sword back as he continued to stare at her, a slight smirk crossing his lips. "Take away all that... and what's left?"_

_With that, he rammed the sword forward, the blade skimming Brennan's hands as she tried to grab the weapon mid-flight before it struck her chest, penetrating the heart, the slight resistance of the spine slowing the rate of progress before he felt and heard the familiar impact of steel on stone as the blade exited her body through her back and struck the wall behind her..._

* * *

  
"NO!" Special Agent Seeley Booth screamed, shooting up in bed, panting desperately as his eyes rapidly flicked around his room before he calmed down.

"A dream..." he said to himself, his breathing slowing to a more normal rate as he took in the familiar objects around him. "Just a dream..."

Even that reassurance couldn't stop him from shivering at the thought of what he'd just witnessed in his mind.

He'd known that he still had... issues... with that part of his life, but in the last month or so, things had become so much more _intense_ ; it was like...

 _No_.

He couldn't think about that.

Dreaming about his past was bad enough, and the addition of this _latest_ twist on his nightmares- the key players from those days replaced by the people he knew _now_ \- was enough to make him wonder if that tumour had left him unable to keep those old memories back the way he had done before.

It might not have been _him_ committing those crimes- becoming human had certainly been a good way to help him personally clarify where he ended and his... other side... began-, and he was grateful in a twisted way for the insight they offered him into the mentality of his opponents when things got ugly, but that didn't mean that he liked remembering them any more than he had to.

What had happened back then had happened, and it wasn't a part of his existence any more; the most supernatural thing Seeley Booth had to deal with was that amateur voodoo guy who'd tried to bring his daughter back to life after killing her, and even _that_ guy had clearly had no idea what he was really doing.

He was just having a bad couple of nights while his subconscious tried to deal with his current issues regarding his feelings for Bones by giving his conscious mind something to focus on that he _could_ deal with (Just because he couldn't talk to Sweets or Gordon Gordon about this didn't mean he couldn't figure something out on his own); it was annoying, but it wasn't anything _serious_...

The sound of his cellphone ringing cut off that thought, prompting Booth to get out of bed and walk over to the jacket where he'd left his phone the night before, still hanging on the back of a chair near his bed.

"Hey, Bones," he said, checking the Caller ID before he put the phone to his ear. "What's up?"

" _We need down at the Jeffersonian, Booth; something... well, somebody left a body on the stairs to the entrance last night_ ," Bones's voice replied.

Booth blinked.

"Hold on; somebody killed someone-?" he began.

" _No, when I said a body, I_ meant _a body; I can't make a precise estimate yet, but this body has clearly been dead for a while before someone left it on the stairs_ ," Bones said, her tone reflecting a slight concern at the implications of that action that Booth doubted anyone could pick up on if they hadn't known her as well as he did. " _Angela's working on some sketches, but..._ "

"I'll be right down," Booth said, nodding resolutely as he stood back up and headed over to the wardrobe to pull out his clothes for the day. "Get the rest of the team there when you can; if somebody's trying to send somebody some kind of message, the sooner we crack it the better."

Even as he hung up the phone, Booth was already trying to work out who might have something to gain by dumping an apparently long-dead body on the Jefferson's doorsteps. Even if one of the killers they'd put away had managed to get out, most of their murders had just been crimes of passion, and it was a bit of a stretch to see someone who killed in the heat of the moment going to the trouble of digging up another body just to freak the 'squint squad' out...

Booth stopped himself before he could take that line of thought any further; he didn't think of himself as a Sherlock Holmes style of detective, but he definitely agreed with Holmes's comment about the dangers of trying to theorise about what was going on before you had all the information.

There was no point in trying to figure out what possible motive somebody might have for dumping a body on the Jeffersonian like that until he was there to take a look at the body for himself; he was only doing this _now_ because he didn't want to think about his dream, but thinking about the dream was the only thing he could do right now that wouldn't result in him possibly forming ideas about the case and looking for evidence to prove that theory instead of just looking for evidence.

He just hoped that they could figure out whose body had been dumped on them as quickly as possible; if nothing else, it would probably help them figure out who was responsible...


	3. The Body from the Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the story's title begins to make sense; hope you like it

As Booth walked into the Jeffersonian, he tried not to pay too much attention to the crime scene tape cordoning off approximately half of the steps leading into the lab; even after that incident when one of the staff had killed one of the grad students during the Gormogon hunt, the Jeffersonian had always seemed like it was more 'apart' from the death they faced on a regular basis (That mess with Professor Riley didn't count; the guy had only worked at the Jeffersonian, he hadn't _died_ there).

He just wished he could figure out who might have done something like this; he'd tried going over his and Bones's old case files on the way over, but the only killers they'd taken out who might have done this kind of thing were Gormogon and Howard Epps, due to their fondness for 'games', and he knew for a fact that both of _those_ two were dead...

"Hey, Bones," he said as he walked into the lab, swiping his ID over the security scanner as he headed up the steps to study the body lying on the examination table, wincing as he realised how small the body was (He _definitely_ had to re-evaluate his thoughts about who could be responsible for this; it took a _seriously_ sick mind to use a dead child for something like this. "What've we got?"

"Female, early teens at best, precise cause and time of death undetermined at the moment," Bones replied; the anthropologist was already studying the remains as they lay on the table. From what Booth could tell, the victim was still in its clothing of a simple-looking dress of some sort- evidently Hodgins or Cam hadn't gotten around to examining the flesh in detail yet-, but otherwise it was hard to make out any specific details; the victim's flesh was reduced to little more than a few scraps around the limbs and head, although Booth acknowledged that he'd seen the squints cope with less fleshy victims than this.

"Where are the others?" he asked, looking curiously around the seemingly empty lab.

"None of the interns are in yet, Hodgins left a message saying that he'd be late in today- something about a busy night last night; I think he needed to deal with something involving the company-, Cam's talking with the security staff to see if they can tell her anything about when the body might have been left there, and Angela's already working on a facial reconstruction," Bones replied, putting her penlight away as she looked up from her examination.

"Hold on a minute; all the security around this place, and you don't know when a _body_ was dumped on your doorstep?" Booth asked, looking at Bones in surprise.

"The alarms are only intended to go off if anybody tries to actually break _into_ the Jeffersonian," Bones clarified, walking around the table to study the body alongside Booth. "Whoever left this body here, they didn't show any interest in actually penetrating the building; the alarms didn't go off because nobody did anything that might have triggered them in the first place, and it was positioned in such a manner that the security staff didn't notice that it was lying there when they walked past the door on their patrols until they actually opened it."

"Right; that makes sense..." Booth said, nodding slightly before he looked back at Bones. "So, what was the cause of death?"

"I..." Brennan began, before she closed her mouth and shook her head. "I don't know.

Booth blinked.

"Hold on; you 'don't know'?" he repeated incredulously. "Bones, I've seen you work out cause of death with _less_ than this to work with-"

"In all of those cases, the injuries that were responsible for the victim's demise were relatively obvious; I've gone over everything left on this body and there's no sign of any actual _injury_ on the body," Bones replied, only a slight trace of frustration in her voice as she looked at him. "The abdomen shows no sign of stab wounds, what I can see of the throat seems to be intact, the bones aren't significantly damaged in any way..."

She shook her head in exasperation; clearly she wasn't used to the bones failing to provide her with information when she began an examination. "I'd be tempted to rule this death as the result of illness or poison, but from what I can tell all the organs appear to be fairly healthy and undamaged, although I'm obviously waiting for Cam and Hodgins to perform their own examinations to confirm my findings..."

"Can't speak for Hodgins right now, but I'll be ready to get on to that as soon as I've got everything together," Cam's voice said from behind them, the two investigators turning around as the head of the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Department walked on to the examination platform, briefly glancing at the body before she turned her attention back to the living. "Well, I've talked with everyone on-duty last night, and from what they can tell, the body was definitely left here at some point after midnight, but apart from that there's no way to determine when someone left the body here; nobody would have been in the park for obvious reasons, and it's not like we have any neighbours who we can ask to give statements..."

"Right..." Booth said, shaking his head slightly as he looked at the body. "Honestly, someone actually _gives_ us a body, and we can't even work out when they dropped it off..."

* * *

  
"Well, I can't help with that bit," Angela said, a solemn expression on her face as she walked up onto the platform with her notebook in her hand, "but I _do_ have a face for our... well, for her."

She was trying to be light-hearted about this to lighten the grim mood, but when she looked at the picture she'd just drawn she felt like crying; the idea that someone had just _killed_ this little girl- she refused to believe that such a sweet girl could have died of some kind of natural causes- was almost too much for her...

Studying the picture, Angela felt her heart break for the little girl she'd sketched; a small round face surrounded by thick brown hair that came down past her shoulders, a couple of long strands around her forehead and a small smile on her face to give her that little extra humanity.

"Oh my God..." Cam said, walking around to study the face that the forensic artist had sketched. "She's so young-"

" _WHAT_?" Booth suddenly yelled, grabbing the sketchpad from Angela's hands and staring at the picture on it with wide, outraged eyes.

"No..." he said, an edge of apparent horror in his voice as he held the paper up close to his face.

"What?" Brennan asked, turning to look at her partner in confusion, only to trail off as she saw his expression; he was staring at the image on the piece of paper with an expression of cold rage that she'd rarely seen him display even when they'd discovered that military cover-up in their first year.

" _No_ ," Booth repeated, almost as though he hadn't heard her, his gaze fixed on the sketched face that he now held in his hands with a strange combination of fear and rage that she'd never seen him display before. "No way... she is _not_ just a 'victim'... there is no _fucking_ way that's her... she's _buried_... she's _safe_..."

"Booth, what-?" Angela began, walking uncertainly towards him, only for the man they'd come to consider a part of their strange extended family to spin around and glare intently at her, an urgent, almost desperate expression in his eyes as he stared at her.

"Could you have made a mistake?" he said.

"What?" Angela asked, looking at Booth in shock; in the almost five years they'd been working together, he'd never questioned her abilities before. "No, I did everything that I've always done when making sketches; barring some kind of screwy surgery that threw off the flesh markers, this is definitely our vic-"

" _Don't_ ," Booth said, glaring at Angela with a sudden intensity that left the artist with the momentary impression that she was looking at an angry lion or some other kind of predator for some reason...

* * *

  
"Don't what?" Brennan asked, looking at her partner uncertainly. "Booth, it's just-"

" _NO_!" Booth practically yelled, throwing the sketchpad to the side and grabbing Angela by the shoulders. " _You do NOT call her 'the victim'; she DIDN'T DESERVE THAT_!"

"Booth, _stop that_ -!" Brennan began, reaching out to grab the agent's arm and haul him off her friend.

"She shouldn't _be here_!" Booth said; Brennan was shocked to actually see the faint gleam of tears in his eyes as he looked at her, his anger at Angela apparently gone as he indicated the body beside them with a vague wave of his other hand. "She shouldn't _be_ here... she's safe... nobody _knows_ about her..."

"Uh... Booth?" Cam asked, walking over to place a comforting hand on her old friend's shoulder as Brennan's hand moved from his arm to his other shoulder, the anger having faded from Booth's expression to leave only sorrow. "Look, no offence, but... what are you _talking_ about?"

For a moment, Booth simply stood in silence as he looked at the body before them, his partner and his ex on either side, before he finally spoke.

"I... I know her," he said simply, indicating the sketch that Angela had drawn, the paper now in Angela's hands once again.

"You _knew_ her?" Angela repeated, her eyes wide as she looked at Booth in sympathy. "Who... who was she?"

"Her name's Kathy," Booth replied with a brief, grim nod at Angela, before he voiced four words Brennan almost didn't believe.

"She was my sister."

Brennan blinked.

Even after she thought her career with Booth had left her prepared for anything, _that_ had been unexpected.

"Hold on; you have a _sister_?" Cam said, withdrawing her hand from his shoulder as she looked at him in shock. "You and Jared have _never_ mentioned a sister-"

"It's not something we like to talk about, OK?" Booth responded briskly, shooting a quick glare over at Cam before he shook his head dismissively. "It was all a long time ago, and it was a pointless crime anyway; some bastard just... walked into the house and slit her goddamn throat..."

"Oh my God..." Angela whispered, her gaze rapidly shifting between Booth and the face on display before them. "How... how old were-?"

"It's... _not_ something I'm comfortable talking about, Ange," Booth said, unable to stop a slight flash of pain crossing his face before he shook his head and continued speaking. "Point is, she's been dead for a long time now; this isn't something you need to worry about."

"What?" Brennan said, looking at Booth in surprise. "But-"

"This isn't like your family, OK, Bones?" Booth said, glaring over at his partner before he spun around to face Cam. "And it's not like Michael either, Cam; I _know_ what happened to my sister, I _know_ who killed her, and it's all been dealt with a long time ago."

"Well, clearly it wasn't if somebody went to all the effort of dumping her here-!" Angela began, only to be stopped by an intense glare from Booth that made it clear that further comments from her on that subject wouldn't be welcome.

"Yeah, somebody _would_ have had to know about... certain things... to know who she was and my connection to the Jeffersonian," he admitted, before he turned around to look at Brennan as she was about to speak. "Which is why you are _not_ getting involved in this, Bones."

"What?" Brennan said, refusing to show how hurt she was at that particular announcement when there were more immediate matters for her to be concerned about. "But-"

"Look," Booth said, holding up his hand to stop her saying anything else, "I get that you want to help, but there is _nothing_ you or the squints can do right now; this is just something I have to deal with, OK?"

"Booth-"

" _No_ ," Booth repeated, turning the full intensity of his glare back on Brennan. "This is just something _I_ have to deal with, Bones; I'll get her body sent back to her grave _myself_ , and you guys just... put her somewhere safe until I can make the arrangements and... do what you do when I'm not here, all right?"

Brennan could only nod at her partner's request/order, uncertain what else she could do; when Booth looked at her in the manner that he was looking at her right now, it didn't exactly encourage her to even think about doing something else.

"But what about whoever-?" Angela began.

"I'll _deal with it_ ," Booth said, looking over at the artist with another intense glare that briefly left Brennan wondering what that meant before she pushed it aside; his Catholic morality probably meant that he just wanted to get his sister's body back in her grave so that she could 'rest in peace'...

"I'm just going to... make the right phone calls, OK?" Booth said, indicating the door with a brief wave of his hand before he turned to face Brennan directly as he pointed at the body- _his sister_ \- lying on the table. "One more thing; _nobody_ touches the body, understood?"

"What?" Brennan asked.

"No bugs, no knives, no more X-rays, not even a quick 'poke around' to see what you can find; I _know_ how Kathy died, I don't want her body to have to go through any more than she already did, OK?" Booth said, his tone decisive as he looked back at Brennan. "There's no reason for you to need to look for anything, so just don't; just... put it somewhere safe until I can send her back where she belongs, OK?"

The barely-visible but still-apparent pain in her partner's eyes at his request were enough to convince Brennan to simply nod in acceptance.

Even when dealing with strangers, she'd developed enough personal awareness to know that some people found it uncomfortable to even _think_ about the people they loved being reduced to skeletons on her examination tables; judging by Booth's reaction to just the idea of his sister's remains having been taken out of her grave, he would almost certainly hate the idea of her team examining the body more closely, particularly given his apparent insistence that he knew what had happened to her...

Even as Booth turned around and walked out of the lab, leaving the Jeffersonian staff to exchange uncomfortable glances with each other, Brennan wasn't sure precisely why she felt such a strong urge to leave these new remains in their current condition that she'd never experienced even when dealing with her own mother's remains.

Even the explanation that the Jeffersonian staff had already essentially 'stripped' her mother down to her skeleton long before she'd seen the body for the first time didn't explain her reluctance to do anything more to this body; somehow, the fact that this little girl lying in front of her was her partner's _sister_...

It put a personal spin on this whole case that she hadn't even fully experienced when she'd discovered her mother's remains in 'Limbo'; she'd always been so sure that her mother was dead that she'd almost been expecting it, but to learn that this little girl before her had shared the same blood as her partner, had lived through some of what he'd experienced growing up... had been left on their own doorstep for the sole purpose of...

Her thought process halted at that moment, her mind flashing back over the conversation.

Booth had said that somebody who knew about his past must have left Kathy's body here, but he hadn't said _why_ someone would have done that; 'why' might be more Booth's thing than hers, but even she knew that nobody would go to all the effort of digging up what Brennan presumed had been a long-buried grave to dump a body in front of a federal building for no reason...

"Uh... not meaning to sound picky, but that didn't really tell us much about what happened, did it?" Angela said at last, looking slightly awkwardly over at the other two women.

"You mean like the fact that he failed to explain _why_ I've never heard him mention a sister before now or the surprising lack of detail about how she ended up dead in the first place despite the fact that I've known him for longer than either of you?" Cam asked, indicating the body with a slightly frustrated wave of her hand. "Trust me, I'm trying to figure that out myself; I've known him and Jared for years, and nobody's ever even _hinted_ that they had a sister at any point."

"And if Booth was old enough when she died to recognise her that quickly..." Brennan mused, picking up the discarded picture to study it herself.

She had to admit, there _were_ elements of the little girl's general facial structure that resembled a feminised version of Booth's own appearance, particularly around the chin and cheekbones; she might not have any way of _confirming_ Booth's story about a previously-unknown sister, but what information she was able to gather at least suggested that he was telling the truth.

 _What happened to you, Kathy Booth_? she asked herself- she didn't believe in actually talking to the dead, but Booth had mentioned the bones 'talking' to her enough that she had picked up the habit of sometimes phrasing her analysis as questions-, her gaze flicking to the girl's throat in memory of Booth's comment about the circumstances of his sister's death; again, the condition of the throat after so long didn't allow her to confirm from a visual assessment whether or not Booth was telling the truth, but there was nothing to contradict his statement that her throat had been slit...

The questions facing her right now were, why would someone do that to a little girl, and what had motivated somebody to leave her body on the Jeffersonian's doorstep (Beyond some apparent desire to send a 'message' to Booth, even if what the message was remained elusive)?


	4. The Special Agent in the Demon Bar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slight reference to the events of "Angel: After the Fall" here; if you've read it, everything up to Los Angeles's return from Hell is canon, and if not, the relevant details will be explained here later

As he stood in his apartment, staring grimly at the phone that he'd just used to place his request for personal time away from the Bureau for the next couple of weeks- the advantage of not taking a vacation that often; it meant that he had the time available when he _really_ needed it in a situation like this-, Booth wondered if he was making the right choice; it might be keeping the squints safe, but going after somebody who knew about _that_ part of his past without his old abilities and absolutely _zero_ access to Wesley's research skills...

It wasn't like he'd been totally inefficient back when it was just him, Cordelia and Doyle, but then they'd had access to Doyle's contacts in the demon underground, and he'd still had access to _some_ of his books; right now all he had on him were a few of the more generic texts- including one on his own personal history that he'd kept in case he needed it to convince anyone else of the truth- and some weapons he'd kept for sentimentality's sake, including a duplicate of Gunn's old hubcap 'axe', and he wasn't sure how he was ever going to _use_ that in this situation.

Still, on the bright side, he had a car or two in a couple of the vintage garages he sometimes spent time in that he could use to get around it without attracting too much attention to himself, his old jacket and shirts still fit despite the slight weight he'd put on since then- he tried to keep in shape, but there was only so much you could do when dealing with issues like aging-, and he'd even found the old amulet that he and Wesley had used to duplicate his vampire abilities while he was in Hell (Even after Wolfram & Hart themselves had collapsed, there was still a magic shop or two where he could pick this kind of thing up if he knew the right people).

With Cullen aware that he would be incommunicado for the next couple of weeks for personal reasons, and the 'squint squad' having been instructed to do nothing more with Kathy's body- they might not _need_ to do anything now that he'd identified her, but that didn't mean he couldn't make sure-, he should have enough time to track down whatever was behind this before it tried anything more... elaborate... to get his attention.

There were other factors that he needed to sort out at this point, of course- mostly involving _how_ anything from that part of his life had managed to find him after all the 'security' the Powers That Be had established when granting him this new life; he might be suspicious about most of their motives, but he knew that Cordelia would have done everything she could to protect him after giving him the chance to start over-, but none of that mattered right now; based on his past experience at dealing with crimes, once he'd identified who he was up against, everything else should fall into place relatively easily...

The sound of his phone ringing drew his attention back to the present, prompting him to pull out his phone and turn it on (He wondered how his old friends would react to his new attitude to technology; he still wasn't _totally_ comfortable with it, but the last few years as a human at least meant he didn't stick out as much as he had before).

"Yes?" he asked, hoping it wasn't Cullen calling him back in; the situation was _far_ too urgent for him to work on a case, despite his usual commitment to his work.

" _Booth, it's me_ ," Bones replied. " _I just... well, I thought you'd want to know that Cam's already cleared out a part of her lab for us to keep Kathy's body stored. We'll be moving it there once the rest of the staff get in- I don't want to risk causing any damage by trying to move her without enough people present to keep an eye on everything we'd need-, but_ -"

"All I need to know, Bones," Booth interjected, cutting that explanation off before it could do further; he might _have_ to deal with the fact that Kathy's corpse was lying in the Jeffersonian, but he didn't have to like it, and he _definitely_ didn't want to think about it any more than he needed to. "Just keep her somewhere safe; I'll get back to you once I've sorted thing out with the relevant people."

" _You really don't have to do this; just because we normally have bodies shipped_ to _us doesn't mean_ -" Bones began.

"She's my sister, Bones; I can _handle_ this," Booth interjected (He hated rejecting what had just been intended as an offer of help so abruptly, but he couldn't risk it; if they learned where Kathy had been buried, it would raise too many questions about his past that he didn't want to answer). "As I said, all I need you to do right now is keep her somewhere safe until I've made the necessary arrangements."

" _Booth_..." Bones began after a brief pause, her voice hinting at her uncertainty over whatever she was about to say before she continued talking, " _I understand that you feel obligated to make sure that your sister rests in peace in death by yourself because you couldn't protect her in life, but_ -"

"Look, Bones, this is _my_ problem, you got that?" Booth interrupted; even if Bones couldn't know how accurate that last assessment had been- his sister wasn't just dead because he'd failed her, she was dead because he'd _killed_ her-, he didn't want her looking at his motives any more than she had to. "There's nothing you can do, so don't even try to do it; if I'm dealing with what I think I'm dealing with, I don't want _any_ of you getting involved in this mess."

" _I'm just trying to help; I'm your_ partner-" Bones began.

"And this isn't something I _need_ a partner for, OK, Bones?" he countered, inwardly regretting his harsh words already but knowing that they had to be said if he was going to make the right kind of impact on her; whoever was after her might know where he worked, but that didn't mean they knew everything about him, and any chance he had to limit Bones's contact with this side of his world was fine with him. "I can handle this on my own; just get Kathy's body somewhere safe until I can deal with that, all right?"

He knew even as he hung up the phone that he could have chosen a more diplomatic way of putting it, but he couldn't help it; he was _not_ going to lose any more people to this side of his life.

His time dealing with the supernatural side of evil might have provided him with more straightforward ways to eliminate his enemies, but the amount of friends he'd lost in the process also made him reluctant to draw any of his new friends in unless he had to.

He'd kept them away from the supernatural side of the street so far; the fact that something had tried to drag them into that part of his life by leaving Kathy on the Jeffersonian's doorstep didn't change that.

Right now, his only priorities were to keep them out of the way and find out any information that might lead him back to the person responsible for desecrating the grave of the only person who'd ever had faith in him when he was originally alive; he'd apologise to Bones once this mess was over.

* * *

  
As she studied the body lying on her examination table, Brennan wondered if it was a good or bad thing that she was so relatively unconcerned about her ignorance of what had happened to this girl; Booth may have provided them with the essential details about her death earlier, but she still didn't really _know_ what had happened...

Then again, maybe that was the reason she wasn't looking into it any further. Booth knew what had happened, and she knew enough about him to know that he would have asked them for help if he thought that there was anything they could do; they'd proven that back when they'd helped him confirm Howard Epps' guilt (Even if they'd set out to investigate the possibility that Epps was _innocent_ , they'd still settled their original goal of eliminating any doubt).

She was still hurt that Booth hadn't asked for her help, but she liked to think that she'd developed enough not to take that as a personal insult; if he thought she could contribute anything, he would have asked for her help.

Right now, all she had to do was make sure that the remains of his sister- no matter how surprised she was that none of them had heard about her earlier, she could understand why it wouldn't have come up before now; as she knew from experience, talking about a loss like that was never easy- stayed safe until the people he wanted to contact- most likely an old army contact of his or something like that- came to collect the body; it wasn't as active a role as she normally liked to play in the investigations, but at least she was helping him.

"Whoa..." Hodgins's voice suddenly said, prompting Brennan to turn around and watch as the entomologist walked up the steps to the main lab area, his gaze fixed on the body. "I got the call, but I don't think I really believed it; someone actually _gave_ us a body?"

"We're still not clear on _why_ they did it, but you're essentially correct, yes," Brennan said, nodding briefly at him.

"Well, at least whoever did this saved us having to ship it ourselves," Hodgins said, smiling slightly as he studied the body on the table. "Not much insect-wise, but I should be able to find something-"

" _NO_!" Brennan yelled, spinning around to look sharply at Hodgins, only to look embarrassed almost automatically as she took in her friend's confused expression; she was almost surprised at how easily she'd forgotten to tell him straight away why they didn't need to do anything to this body.

"I'm... I'm sorry, Hodgins," she said, shaking her head slightly as she looked apologetically at him. "It's just... Booth asked that we _not_ do anything to the body until he can make arrangements to send her back to her grave; we just haven't found somewhere else to put her until he's ready to ship her back yet..."

"Hold on; Booth _doesn't_ want us looking at the body?" Hodgins repeated, looking at his boss in confusion. "Why would-?"

"It's his sister, Jack," Angela cut in, walking up behind Hodgins to look at him with a very pointed stare as he turned around to face her. "Someone went and dug up the body of Booth's sister- who, from what he said, was _murdered_ right in front of him when he was younger- and stuck it on our doorstep to send him some kind of freaky message that was serious enough for him to head straight off to deal with it _and_ not tell us anything about whatever the message was..."

She shook her head as she noticed that her former fiancé was looking at her in a manner that suggested he had no idea what to make of her. "The point is, he specifically informed us that he already knows everything he wants to know about how she died and everything else like that, so we're to just leave it alone until he can sort out getting her sent back to her grave so that her body doesn't have to go through anything it doesn't have to go through; got that?"

"S... sure thing..." Hodgins said, nodding slightly weakly at Angela as he turned to study the body on the table once again, his expression now contemplative rather than critical. "That's Booth's _sister_? Damn..."

Then he processed the rest of what Angela had just said, and looked over at her in surprise. "We don't know why someone left the body here? Why would-?"

"Jack," Angela said, the solemn expression on her face as she looked at him telling him almost as much as she was about to say, " _we_ don't know that, but _Booth_ apparently does... and he made it fairly clear that he doesn't want us doing anything else with this particular case."

"I know that it's a bit... well, unusual, but what else are we supposed to do?" Brennan asked, as Hodgins opened his mouth to protest. "Everything I've found from a cursory examination supports Booth's story about how she died, Angela's picture provided us with enough visual information to confirm her identity, and it's not like we have the authority to carry out our own investigation without Booth; he said that he wants to deal with this on his own, we can't exactly stop him."

"Point..." Hodgins muttered, studying the body with a slightly frustrated sigh before he looked back at Brennan. "Well, as long as I'm here, I'll just... see what I can do about cleaning her clothes, huh?"

"It's as good a way to use your time here as anything," Brennan responded with an uncertain shrug; as long as Kathy was here, they might as well clean her up before they returned her body to the grave.

In all honesty, she wasn't sure why she was spending so long studying this body herself, really; what she could do without conducting a more in-depth analysis was limited, and what she'd seen so far tied in with Booth's identification of the body as that of his sister, but there was just something about it that didn't _quite_ fit...

* * *

  
As he walked into one of Washington's few demon bars- the amount of law enforcement offices and agencies in the area meant that few demons actually _tried_ anything in this city even if there was still a slight demonic presence; it was one reason he'd settled down here as it limited the chances of running into anyone who'd known him in the past-, Booth forced himself to remember to think like _Angel_ for this scenario; Booth could afford to relax slightly in these kind of situations because of his professional connections making it more likely that he'd be found if he was abducted or lost, but Angel only had himself to rely on in these kind of situations, so he had to remain _particularly_ alert.

The amulet might make it easier for him to blend in to the crowd, but that would only apply so long as nobody _really_ paid attention; it generated enough of a mystical presence to fool most casual observers into perceiving him as a vampire, and gave him some degree of the physical attributes he'd possess if he was still Angel, but it couldn't _totally_ compensate for what he'd lost when he became human...

Still, as he was permitted direct access to the club by the alert vampire bouncer on the door of the club, a quick glance around him confirmed that he'd chosen the right place; a few demons and vampires hanging around, mingling and drinking a variety of drinks with a minimal of combat, giving the general impression of the usual crowd at Willy's rather than the more relaxed atmosphere of Caritas.

Heading up to the main bar, Booth ignored the stares he was attracting- he _wanted_ attention right now; the more people who knew that 'Angel' was in town the more likely his unknown adversary would focus on him rather than the Jeffersonian staff- as he sat down at the bar, looking pointedly at the bartender.

"What'll it be?" the man asked; he looked mostly human, but there was something about the way he stood that suggested to Booth that he was only about as human as Doyle had been (One of the few vampire abilities this amulet _couldn't_ duplicate were his old enhanced senses).

"Information," Booth replied, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the other man, allowing the old intensity of his experiences as his vampiric alter-ego to dominate his gaze in a manner that he'd long ago tried to suppress. "I've heard reports of something... out of the ordinary... going down in this area; wanted to see if anyone here knew anything more specific."

"Maybe we do, and maybe we don't," a demon with light blue skin and two long horns that lay against the head while stretching down almost to its neck said, looking over at Booth from its position alongside him. "What's it to you?"

"A lot," Booth replied, turning his gaze slightly to study the other demon; possibly tough, but not overly muscular if it came to a fight. "Why?"

"Let's just say that things are going to get... interesting... round here in the next couple of days," the demon replied, smirking slightly as it looked at him. "Might not be the best place for a vamp to try and muscle himself into a place where he gets some more authority..."

The part of Booth that would also be Angel rolled his eyes at that comment; one thing he hadn't missed about the demon world was the fact that _everyone_ newly-arrived in a particular territory had to 'prove' their right to remain there.

"Maybe you haven't heard of me," Booth said, mentally crossing his fingers as he prepared to say the words that would effectively end the mystical 'silence' surrounding his fate after the Fall of Los Angeles. "I'm Angel."

The silence that suddenly fell on the bar around him was all Booth needed to know that it was time for him to react; as the first couple of eager vampires charged him, his already-sharp human reflexes had him slipping a couple of stakes from his wrist-launchers into his hands, following the move by spinning around to plunge the stakes into the vampire's hearts.

"I'm just passing through," he said, taking a careful look around the bar to make sure everyone understood what he was saying; it was unlikely he'd run into anyone here once he'd dealt with this current situation and didn't have to pretend that he was still Angel any more, but there was no harm in making sure nobody felt inclined to look for him later. "As I said, I'm only looking for information; first one who wants to make this difficult... well, I think we've already established what happens in that scenario."

"Uh... right," the bartender said, looking awkwardly around at the other demons before he looked back at the FBI agent/vampire, who was even now re-taking his seat, his earlier seating partner having practically scurried off to a seat further down the bar. "Look, I haven't heard anything _definite_ , but there _are_ a few rumours about some... stuff... going down somewhere; guy came here last night to pick up some talent for something he's trying to do in this area sometime next week, something about old grudges they want to settle..."

"Anything else?" Booth asked, leaning over to look more pointedly at the demon.

"Uh... no, that's it," the bartender said, looking apprehensively at him (Booth hated to admit it, but that was the part of being Angel he'd particularly missed; the ability to inspire fear in another person just by being himself, without the need to flash his badge or pull out his gun...). "He wasn't exactly chatty; once he'd picked up a couple of people who were willing to help out with security- mostly vamps, actually-, he moved on; didn't say anything about where or when..."

The bartender trailed off as Booth sat in silence, contemplatively taking in the man before him, before the former Scourge of Europe came to a decision.

"For your sake, that had better be everything you know," he said, standing up and fixing the man in front of him with an intense stare; he wasn't going to say anything more about the current situation, and there were other bars he had to check out before he could be sure of forming a clear picture of the current situation. "Because if I find out you kept something from me on _purpose_..."

He didn't finish the sentence, but as he walked out of the bar he knew that he'd made his point.

He might not have anything _definite_ , but the reference to someone looking for additional forces to help settle old grudges sounded like it was related to what had happened last night; it was something to build on, at least.

He just hoped that it wouldn't take him long to find someone who _could_ tell him what he was looking for; claiming that he needed a leave of absence was just about plausible given some of the things he'd seen when he was working with Bones, but if Cullen or anyone else at the FBI found out that Seeley Booth was spending his 'vacation' wandering around Washington, he'd _definitely_ attract too many questions...


	5. A Mutilation in a Suit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: A slight metafictional 'nod' here, but this is the only time something like this will happen in this story; I just felt that the guy in question had such an impact on Booth and Brennan's partnership (Coupled with the implications of his appearance resembling a certain past enemy of Angel's) that it would be foolish _not_ to use all of the opportunities he presented
> 
> 2: Another reference here to the Buffy/Angel crossover novel _Monster Island_ ; if you're only going to read one crossover novel from that series in your life, make it that one, because the plot is _superb_

As she sat at her desk, Brennan could only stare silently at the screen in front of her, her fingers occasionally skimming over the keyboard as she wrote down the next few words of her current book, trying to place the source of this annoying 'itch'- a metaphorical one, anyway- in the back of her head.

As much as she trusted Booth, she still found herself incapable of shaking off the feeling that there was something more to the body currently lying in Doctor Saroyan's lab than what she had discovered through her so-far merely cursory examination, but she just couldn't _quite_ bring herself to go that step further and figure out just what it was; Booth had specifically asked that they not analyse the body further, and with his identification of his sister's remains there really wasn't any need to do anything more...

She wondered if this was what Booth considered a 'gut' feeling; everything that she'd gathered about Kathy Booth's life fit- his sister was murdered in front of him at a young age, nobody in the family had told her about it before now because the memory was too painful, somebody had left the body on their doorstep as a 'message' to Booth- but _something_ about this whole scenario felt wrong to her on a level that she couldn't entirely place...

Her phone suddenly rang, prompting her to halt that train of thought as she picked up the object in question.

"Doctor Brennan?" she replied, quickly saving the document in front of her even as she spoke, only for further activity to be forgotten when she learned the nature of the request that the person on the other end of the line was calling to make.

Even with her confusion over the current situation with Booth and his sister to occupy her thoughts, she couldn't turn down an official request for her services from the FBI even if she'd wanted to; the unusual nature of the case that was subsequently presented to her just made it clear that she _couldn't_ turn it down.

* * *

  
As she stood alongside the temporary agent assigned to her for the current investigation- Agent Tahm, Brennan reminded herself; the last thing she was wanted to do was appear rude-, Brennan couldn't stop herself shuddering slightly at the sight of the body lying on the bed of the prison cell in front of her.

Even with her long experience with violent death, the sight in front of her was somehow one of the more disturbing sights she'd seen, maybe because of the almost clinical manner in which the body had been arranged, despite the fact that the murder in question had taken place in a high-security prison where the killer should have had trouble even getting into the facility in the first place. The body itself was dressed in an almost disturbingly clean grey suit as it lay on the cell bed; even though the cell itself was splattered with blood, the only blood on the suit was around the neck and wrists of the suit, where the killer had not only taken off the tips of the subject's fingers, but followed it up by somehow literally cutting his face off.

Even if this _was_ ex-Special Agent Jamie Kenton- the man who'd once tried to kill her and feed her to his dogs-, nobody deserved what had been done to this man...

"So?" Agent Tahm asked, breaking her train of thought. "What do you think?"

"The body structure certainly fits Agent Kenton's," Bones replied- after she'd had nothing to do but stare at the man in what she had been certain were her last few moments of life, her memory of his face was so clear she could probably have drawn it to a level that would have surpassed Angela if she'd felt inclined to do so-, "and what I can tell from the flesh markers left around the face fits that assessment, but I'd prefer to have the body shipped back to the lab for further analysis..."

Her voice trailed off as she noticed something tucked underneath the tie the body was wearing. Making sure that her gloves were clean, Brennan carefully reached over to extract the object, revealing it to be a simple piece of white card with a message written on it.

' _Replace what's missing, and the resemblance is uncanny, huh_?'

The seemingly pointless message on the card was strange enough on its own, but it was when Brennan turned the card over to reveal a strange, vaguely-shaped logo that looked a bit like an angel and a phone number that she vaguely recognised as a Los Angeles area code that she became confused.

What was going _on_ here?

Who would go to this much trouble to kill Kenton in prison and dress his dead body up in a _suit_ after doing so?

And why did that handwriting seem so familiar...?

* * *

  
As he walked out of the latest bar on his list- not that it was a particularly long list; as he'd reflected earlier, Washington didn't really have an abundance-, Booth almost wished that there was a vampire or two outside for him to vent his frustrations on; he'd so far turned up nothing more than a whole mass of rumour and comparatively little in the way of definitive information.

It was at times like this that he really missed Doyle's old contact network; even after his original Seer had died, most of Doyle's old friends had still been willing to talk to him when a case required more hands-on information about the demon underground than what Wesley's reading or even Lorne's insight could provide- even if a few of those sources had dried up after Zeke's death during the fight against the Coalition-, but Booth, for all that he was an occasional gambler, just didn't spend enough time in bars or undercover to do that kind of thing himself.

There were times when official authorisation had its disadvantages; private detectives might run the range from honest to crooks, but they could at least form some interesting contacts in the business that cops couldn't get-

The ringing of his phone cut off that line of thought as he pulled it out of his pocket, hurrying back to his car before he answered it; the less opportunities people had to listen in, the better.

"Booth," he said as he sat in the driver's seat.

" _It's me_ ," Bones's voice replied, her tone apologetic. " _I know you're busy right now, but I thought you should know; Jamie Kenton's been killed in prison_."

Booth's blood ran cold.

 _Kenton_...

He might not have liked the guy that much- not wanting him to be killed by the mob he'd been working for after he'd failed them was just because he wanted Kenton to suffer while he was _alive_ rather than get off easy by being allowed to die-, and his testimony during the trial after his arrest had been enough to eliminate virtually every friend he'd made in the bureau with the discovery of just how far he'd fallen, but who'd go to the trouble of having him _killed_?

"How'd it happen?" he asked.

" _As far as I can determine_ ," Bones began, " _someone broke his neck and then... well, I'm working on how, but they somehow literally cut his face off- along with his fingerprints- as well as dressing him in a grey suit_ -"

" _What_?" Booth said, his voice cutting her off mid-sentence as he took in what had just been said.

Marcus Hamilton's exact physical double is found with fingerprints removed in a manner that would practically be _asking_ for him and Bones to be called in to identify the remains (If he hadn't been away at the moment he _would_ have been there, he knew that for a fact)?

If this wasn't another part of his mysterious enemy's attempts to get under his skin, he didn't know how killers thought as well as he thought he did.

Add Kathy's body into the equation, and this _couldn't_ be a coincidence; whoever he was up against _knew_ about his past as Angel...

" _Booth_?" Bones's voice said from the other end of the line. " _Are you still_ -?"

"Just... a bit surprised, that'sall," Booth said, hoping she wouldn't ask too many questions; shock was a legitimate enough reaction to the news, after all. "Any clues about who did it?

" _Apart from the fact that the person responsible was strong enough to break Kenton's neck so quickly that he didn't even seem to notice before it had happened, along with the anatomical knowledge they'd need to remove the missing appendages so quickly, there's nothing else that I can see_..." Bones began, before she sighed. " _I'm not even sure where to go from here, Booth; I know that you normally do 'why' in these situations, but I've been thinking about this myself- I think it's because I actually knew him- and the only people who could have any motive to kill Kenton now was the mob gang he'd been working with, and from what you said his testimony put most of them away_ -"

"It's still something to consider; tell that to the agent in charge," Booth said, cutting Bones off before she could say any more; if she had a more obvious suspect for Kenton's murder, that limited the chance of her being dragged into his current investigation. "Look, I'm kind of in the middle of something right now; I'll call when I can, OK?"

He hated leaving Bones hanging like that, but the more time he spent in contact with her right now the greater the chances that the demonic underground would figure out who he was now and go after _Booth's_ friends and family to get at Angel, and that was just too big a risk for him to feel comfortable taking it right now.

* * *

  
Staring silently at the body before him- they'd moved their new remains to a side laboratory while the main lab area was used by a few grad students to study some interesting remains from limbo, and he'd been left to keep an eye on the body; Cam was needed to supervise the grad students in Doctor Brennan's absence and Angela just didn't feel comfortable staying with the body now that she knew the girl was related to a friend-, Hodgins wondered how things had become so complicated with what he'd assumed after first hearing about it was nothing more than a morbid student prank.

Who the hell would have so many issues with Booth- the only person this body _could_ be 'for', no matter how much he thought about it- that they'd go and dig up his apparently long-dead sister and dump her body on the door of a high-security building for no apparent reason than to psyche Booth out? He hadn't even seen how Booth had reacted to the body's identity being revealed and he could guess that it wouldn't have been pretty even if Angela and Brennan's reactions to the memory of his response hadn't given him a pretty clear clue; their regular Bureau contact could get either veryvocal or very silent when it came to his personal life, and this was definitely an issue where volume was to be expected.

God... he'd never really thought about Booth's childhood- not that he thought about anyone's, really; Doctor Brennan's had only come up out of necessity-, but the idea that Booth had actually seen his _sister_ die when he was a kid...

It was no wonder the guy didn't want them doing anything else to the body; the last thing anyone would want in this kind of situation would be to have to 'relive' what happened to somebody they cared about after _seeing_ it happen themselves (Angela hadn't said that was what had happened, but judging by what she had described of Booth's reaction Hodgins felt like it was a decent guess)?

Still... even if Booth didn't want them doing anything to his sister's remains in themselves, that didn't mean that he couldn't run a few quick tests on the particulates on the girl's dress- a bit old-fashioned for funeral attire, but he supposed Booth's family were just traditional that way or something- and at least get an idea about where she'd been buried so that he could help Booth make arrangements to get her back to her grave.

A trip like that would be a bit complicated to set up, of course- he might work with bodies himself but it wasn't like he generally had much to do with transportation of remains to various locations, and in those cases people were generally more concerned with just getting everything to the Jeffersonian rather than getting the body parts there while they were still attached to the rest of the body.

But, after everything that Booth had done for them- and particularly for Doctor Brennan- over the years- especially after they'd pretty much ruined Jared's career during the capture of the Gravedigger, even if Booth's brother had chosen to help them on his own in the end-, Hodgins didn't think the other guy would mind if he helped make sure that what was left of his sister got back to where it was meant to go, and it wasn't like he was _defying_ Booth's request not to analyse the body; he was just... working around it so that he could help the guy out in his own way.

What reason could Booth have to object to that?

With that thought- after taking a quick glance at the rest of the lab to make sure nobody else could see him; his intentions might be good but he didn't want to waste time explaining himself to the rest when the test he needed to perform was pretty simple to do and would give them useful information in a relatively short amount of time-, Hodgins pulled on his gloves and set to work examining Kathy Booth's funeral dress; it shouldn't be too hard to find a decent-sized amount of particulates on this...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the plot thickens; next chapter sees the 'squint squad' learning that there's _far_ more going on here than they thought there was originally...


	6. The Particulates in the Dress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel obligated to mention in advance that Jared makes an appearance in this chapter, but at this point, feel free to assume that this story either takes place before his return to the States

As he walked out of the last bar on his list, the faint sound of a few pained groans the only indication that he'd been engaged in a fight in the building behind him- it might have been some time since he fought for his life with his _fists_ on a regular basis, but some things you just didn't forget-, Booth turned over the information he'd just found in his mind.

 _A ritual_? he thought to himself, flexing his shoulder slightly to work some of the stiffness out of it. _All that effort, and the only thing_ anyone _has to tell me is that someone's planning a summoning ritual in a warehouse tonight_?

He could certainly think of a few old enemies of his from that part of his life who might be interested in doing that kind of thing, but why would they dump Kathy's body on the Jeffersonian's doorstep the day before they performed the ritual? That wouldn't draw his attention _away_ from their plans; if anything, it had made him actively aware that there was something going on here...

In other words, he was almost certainly walking into a trap if he went to that warehouse.

At the same time, he didn't have a choice; he couldn't allow someone who knew that Angel had become Special Agent Seeley Booth- and clearly meant him harm into the bargain- to remain alive and free with this knowledge; the risk of his unknown enemy passing on that information to more people who might mean him harm was too great.

Besides... given that he had his amulet and his weapons on him, he might _just_ be able to take his unknown enemies by surprise; if they were expecting him to come to them armed with only Seeley Booth's usual weapons and resources, he'd just have to turn the tables on them and show that he had a few more tricks up his sleeve than what they were expecting.

It wasn't a perfect strategy, but if he was going to finish this before whoever was behind this decided to go after the squints, it was the best chance he was going to get.

Their lives _depended_ on things being capable of being explained by scientific methods; he would _not_ expose them to the world that he'd so long been a part of unless he had no other choice...

* * *

  
As Camille stared at the grisly sight lying on the lab table, she tried to decide if the knowledge- even second-hand knowledge, given that it had happened a few months before she started working with them- that the man before her had once tried to kill two of her closest friends made it easier to accept the fact that he'd died in such a disturbing manner, but quickly concluded that it didn't.

He might not have actually _felt_ anything when he was killed- her analysis so far suggested to her that whoever had killed him had broken Kenton's neck first before they 'added' all the additional touches; he'd have died to quickly to feel any real pain-, but that didn't change the fact that the idea of someone hating this guy enough to cut his face and fingertips off- she still didn't get the relevance of the suit; why go to all the effort of dressing this guy up in what was clearly an almost ridiculously expensive suit?- was still somewhat unnerving; they were clearly dealing with a _very_ disturbed individual...

"Is there anything noteworthy about the flesh?" Doctor Brennan's voice suddenly asked, breaking into Cam's train of thought as the anthropologist walked up to the lab area.

"Mmm?" Cam replied, glancing briefly over at Brennan before she shook her head. "No, not that I can see; everything seems to fit the on-site assessment that his neck was broken and all subsequent mutilation was post-mortem, although the lack of blood splatter around the clothing suggests that the suit was placed on the body before rigor mortis had set in enough to make it difficult to manoeuvre the limbs the right way..."

" _Damn_ , really?" Hodgins added, the entomologist walking over to stand beside the two women with a slightly grim expression on his face as he looked at the body. "Who goes and gives a murdered guy a perfectly good suit after cutting his face off?"

"Makes about as much sense as this note we found on the body," Angela added, shaking her head in frustration; after she'd confirmed that the body's flesh marks matched Kenton's, she'd spent some time checking over the card in case she could find anything about the logo or phone number on it. "No sign of fingerprints, the phone number on the card seems to have been disconnected- and it lead to a hotel that was condemned years ago and never seems to have re-opened as a business anyway-, and the logo turned up some kind of references to some 'detective agency' in the city that doesn't seem to have any kind of paperwork backing it up..."

"What about the handwriting?" Brennan asked, wondering if Angela had felt the same nagging familiarity she'd felt when she'd first seen it. "Did you... see anything... odd?"

"If you're asking if I found it a bit familiar myself, yeah, I thought about that, but it doesn't work," Angela finished for her friend. "I ran over the handwriting samples of everyone whose handwriting we'd see enough to give that kind of impression, and while it _does_ look a bit like Booth's, you don't need to be a handwriting expert to see that they're a bit different; speaking as an artist, the angle's all wrong for a start..."

"Booth?" Cam said, latching on to the artist's last comment in surprise. "The writing on the card looks like _Booth's_ -?"

"It's not like it could _be_ him; Kenton died last night and Booth was with me at the diner as we went over the last bit of paperwork from our previous case," Brennan interjected, shaking off the slight doubt in her mind even as she spoke. Putting aside the fact that something like this would go completely against everything Booth stood for as a person, everything about Kenton confirmed that he'd died while Booth was eating with her at the diner; the only reason nobody had reported the death earlier was that his cell had been in a fairly isolated part of the prison due to the additional security he required as a result of his old FBI training. "The handwriting's... well, it's probably just a coincidence."

She hated that term, but it wasn't like she could think of a better one; it couldn't exactly be a frame when she was able to confirm that Booth wasn't responsible this easily.

"Is there a reason you're over here, Doctor Hodgins?" Cam asked as she looked over at the man in question, recognising that the previous topic had at least been shelved for the moment and that there was no immediate reason for the entomologist's presence in the current analysis.

"Well..." Hodgins replied, his expression suddenly assuming the same awkward manner that she had come to recognise from the first time she'd found him burning a spam corpse in a lab, "you know the... body... someone left on the doorstep last night...?"

"You mean Kathy Booth's body?" Brennan asked, looking at Hodgins with a suddenly new intensity (Cam wondered briefly why Brennan was referring to the body like that- calling her by name rather than just referring to her as 'Booth's sister'-, but this wasn't the time to be thinking about stuff like that). "The body I specifically ordered you _not_ to examine any further?"

She acknowledged that Hodgins mostly had good reasons for his 'experiments'- even if sometimes the reason was based more around satisfying his own slightly strange curiosity rather than actual scientific data-, but when he directly defied an order _and_ a request from a friend, she had to wonder at times if his expertise was worth the additional hassle he could cause her...

* * *

  
"That's the thing," Hodgins said, looking increasingly awkward as his gaze shifted between the two women; no matter how much he acknowledged that the need for truth couldn't be more important than the need to prove something you already thought was true, he hated having to introduce such contradictory information when they were creating a picture based on the facts in question, particularly when it was about someone they knew. "I was cleaning her clothing up a bit- just removing a bit of the dust, you know; figured Booth might like it better if his sister's remains _didn't_ look like they were such a mess-"

"Excuse me?" Brennan said, gazing pointedly at Hodgins with the same critical gaze she always seemed to use when studying bones, as though trying to determine how he'd suddenly stopped working properly. "You _examined her remains_? After Booth _specifically_ asked us not to do _anything_ to her-"

"I didn't take any of the _flesh_ off the body, I was just cleaning her clothing and thought I'd run the resulting particulates through a quick scan- see if I could help Booth by arranging one of the company jets to get her back to her grave or something, you know-, and..." Hodgins began, his voice trailing off as he looked uncertainly between the two women before he finally finished his sentence. "Well, did Booth ever say anything about his family living in Ireland at some point?"

"Ireland?" Cam repeated in confusion. "No, not that I can remember; why?"

"Because," Hodgins replied, his entire appearance presenting a grim confusion as he spoke to his two superiors, "according to the particulate samples on her dress, Kathy Booth was buried in Galway."

" _Galway_?" Cam repeated, her mind clearly rapidly going over what she knew of Booth's history, even if Hodgins was fairly sure that she already knew that this latest news wouldn't fit anything in Booth's background. "She was buried in _Ireland_?"

"Are you sure about that?" Brennan asked, looking at Hodgins with a slightly stunned expression that seemed to be trying to contain a greater feeling of shock.

"Particulates don't match anything you'd find in America- well, there were a few small bits I traced back to a warehouse district, but I’m pretty sure that’s just where she was kept before she was left here or something like that-, but I ran a quick check on a few online databases run by a few of my peers, and the characteristics match what you'd find of the dirt in Ireland; Galway, to be precise," Hodgins confirmed with a resolute, albeit confused, nod. "Don't ask me how or why someone went to all the trouble of bringing her over here just to dump her on our doorstep, but that's the case; she was buried in Ireland."

He thought about mentioning the apparent age of some of the bugs he'd found at the same time, but decided against it; given that he'd only found them in the dirt, it was possible that the insects in question had just died in the ground and been dug up and buried on top of Kathy (The only way he'd know for sure either way would be for him to examine any insects that might be _in_ Kathy's body, which Booth would probably shoot him for if his previous request was any judge...).

"But... but this doesn't make _sense_!" Cam practically yelled, walking off the platform as the three of them headed for Brennan's office, the Jeffersonian administrator briefly indicating to a couple of the currently-studying grad students that they should take over dealing with Kenton's body; evidently, she'd concluded that something as personal as this would be best discussed somewhere away from the general Jeffersonian staff. "Booth's never been to Ireland since I've known him- God, I thought the only time he even went to _Europe_ was when you two went to London for that conference- and now his sister was _buried_ there?"

* * *

  
"I assure you, I'm as confused about this turn of events as you are; Booth's never given me any indication that he ever had any close Irish relatives on any side of his family history, never mind that he lived there himself," Brennan said as they entered her office, the anthropologist shutting her door behind them before she walked over to her desk and picked up her phone.

"Uh... what are you doing?" Hodgins asked, looking inquiringly at Brennan, clearly confused at the apparently sudden decision to start a new conversation when they were still in the middle of the current one.

"I'm going to call Jared," Brennan responded as she began to dial the number Booth had given her after his brother left; in the event of anything happening to him, he wanted someone else who could get in touch with Jared if the need arose.

"Oh... right," Hodgins said, looking suddenly sheepish at her statement; evidently he was wondering why he hadn't realised that was what she was doing himself.

"Well, at least _this_ time we don't have to worry about him getting fired for helping us..." Angela muttered, looking slightly awkwardly around the office before she looked back at Brennan. "Bren, I get that this is getting complicated, but is bringing _another_ Booth into this-?"

" _Yeah_?" Jared's voice said on the end of the line, the sound of wind blowing around the phone and the faint sound of moving traffic suggesting that he was on the edge of a road somewhere.

"Jared?" Brennan replied. "It's Temperance-"

" _Tempe?_ " Jared replied, surprise clear in his voice. " _What's up? Something wrong?_ "

"Everybody's safe and well, I promise," Brennan responded, quickly guessing the reason for Jared's query; given that she'd only contacted him last time because she needed his help to find his brother, it was natural for him to assume that something similar was prompting her current call. "I apologise in advance if this is a difficult topic, but... Kathy's body was found on the Jeffersonian-"

" _Sorry;_ whose _body_?" Jared asked, confusion obvious in his voice.

"Kathy," Brennan repeated, looking over at Cam and Hodgins in confusion. "Your sister? Booth never mentioned if she was older or younger than either of you, but-"

" _Tempe, I don't know what my brother's on to make him come up with this, but I'll tell you this for nothing; we don't have- and have never_ had- _a sister_ ," Jared said, his tone making it clear that there was no room for argument or misunderstanding.

"Oh," Brennan said, her expression faltering as she looked around at her friends, her mind struggling for an appropriate response to this sudden upheaval of something she'd only barely accepted herself before latching on to the most basic possible explanation. "Well... Sorry we wasted your time."

" _Wait_ -" Jared began, only for Brennan to terminate the call; with this case having just become even more complicated, the last thing she wanted was to be asked more questions she couldn't answer.

"What?" Angela asked, voicing the confusion of the other three.

"Jared just said that he'd never had a sister," Brennan said.

"Huh?" Hodgins said.

"OK, now I _know_ that doesn't make sense!" Cam said, slamming one hand on Brennan's desk in frustration as she looked around the room. "I could get Booth not telling _us_ about Kathy- what he said didn't exactly make it sound like something he'd want to talk about- but I _know_ how much family means to him; he wouldn't just... not even _mention_ that they had a sister to Jared, no matter _how_ long ago she'd died!"

For a moment, the four of them could only stare silently at each other, until Hodgins finally broke the silence.

"What's going _on_ here?" he said, looking around at his co-workers. "I mean, I get that I'm the first to cry 'conspiracy', but what the Hell could make _Booth_ lie to us about stuff like this?"

It was moments like this that made Brennan realise how much of an impact Booth had made on the team she'd assembled here. Hodgins might still have his moments where he had doubts about the integrity of the government agencies they came into contact with, but the moment anything came up to question Booth's integrity he refused to believe it simply because of who was being accused, regardless of their role in the structure he suspected.

* * *

  
"Well... if anyone's interested, I can think of four _possible_ answers to this question," Angela said, looking uncertainly at her friends before continuing in recognition of their silent consent for her to do so. "Option one; Jared's lying about not knowing he had a sister."

"Why would he do that?" Brennan asked.

"No reason that I can think of, but I had to put it out there," Angela said with a slight shrug. "Option two; Booth's lying about this _being_ his sister."

" _Definitely_ not," Cam said, shaking her head firmly. "Why would he do that?"

"Yeah, I get that there's no _reason_ for him to lie about something like this either, but that _kind_ of leads into my third option..." Angela began, looking awkwardly over at Brennan in full awareness of the awkward emotions this next topic would bring up. "Namely, that Booth's... look, to put it bluntly, option three is that Booth had a relapse of his brain tumour and just _thinks_ this is the body of his sister..."

For a moment, Brennan simply stood in silence, her expression shifting slightly as she fought to maintain the control that had so long been a part of her, until she finally spoke.

"He's not," she said simply.

"Bren, I get that you don't want to think about it, but-"

"He's _not_ ," Brennan insisted, refusing to allow her memories to take her back to that dark period of her life- those terrible few days where she'd thought that everything that made Booth Booth had been gone forever, the fear that she'd pushed his mental state to the edge- as she stared around at her friends. "There were signs and indications that something was wrong long before the tumour reached that stage; apart from his shock at recognising Kathy from your picture, he's the same as he always was-"

"Plus, why would he hallucinate that some random body that was obviously put here for a _reason_ is a sister who doesn't really exist?" Hodgins interjected, shrugging slightly as the three women looked at him. "Hey, I make conspiracies my hobby, and I know that _nobody_ leaves a body somewhere like this without a reason; since nobody else here's recognised that picture, Kathy's _got_ to be real, or someone dumping this body on us makes no sense according to _any_ standard of human behaviour."

"Right..." Angela said, nodding in acknowledgement of Hodgins' point, even as Brennan gave him a grateful smile of her own; even if she'd phrased it in emotional terms, it was good to hear a scientific explanation- even if it was a partially psychological one- to confirm that Booth wasn't going to have a relapse.

"Which leaves us option four, which is...?" Cam asked promptingly, bringing the conversation back to the original topic.

"Which is just that there's something weird going on here that we don't know about, but I'm completely stuck as to _what_ that could be," Angela finished, shrugging awkwardly as she looked around at her friends. "I mean, _none_ of the facts we've got really make any kind of sense; how does Booth have a sister that nobody else seems to know about who's been buried in Ireland for all these years, and who'd have something to gain by dumping her body on our doorstep?"

The silence that greeted her as she made that concluding statement was everything they needed to confirm what they were all thinking.

Something strange was going on in Washington right now, and, even if they had no idea what it was or who was behind it, the man they all considered 'their' FBI agent was part of that.

"Well," Brennan said at last, looking solemnly around at her co-workers in resolution, "it looks like the only way we're going to find out any more about what's happening here is checking out that warehouse that Hodgins mentioned."

"Warehouse?" Angela repeated, her eyes widening in sudden apprehension. "As in, the warehouse where somebody apparently kept Kathy's body before they dumped it here? Bren, no offence, but we're not FBI agents; we don't exactly have _training_ to do that kind of thing-"

"It's not like I'm going to _arrest_ anybody, Ange; I'm not even going to go into the warehouse, I'm just... going to see if I can see anything in that area that might give me some idea of who's behind this," Brennan corrected her friend as she stood up- she'd been on enough stake-outs to be comfortable in her ability to unobtrusively gather information from a distance if she had to-, indicating a clock as she did so. "It's almost time to finish for the day anyway; if I leave now, I should be able to grab something to eat before I go to the warehouse-"

"Make that 'we' and you've got a deal, Doctor Brennan," Cam interjected, her arms folded resolutely.

"'We'?" Hodgins repeated, before he caught the glare the other two women were giving him and nodded. "I mean, yeah, _we'll_ do it..."

"Hold on; I never said-" Brennan began.

"It's _Booth_ , sweetie," Angela interjected, her tone resolute as she looked at her friend. "You don't have to ask us; we're _offering_ to come along."

"Too many people-" Brennan began.

"Just make it easier for us all to spot something that one of us might miss," Cam finished for her. "As you said yourself, we're just looking to see if we can see anything unusual about the place; we're not going to do anything _too_ dangerous."

For a moment, Brennan thought about trying to evade them later on and just go to the warehouse herself, but she knew that would be pointless; with all of them aware of the location that Hodgins had identified, it wouldn't be that difficult for them to know where she was going even if it had worked.

"All right," she said, smiling slightly at them in acceptance. "And... thanks."

She didn't know what she was going to find when she got to that warehouse, but at least she knew that she could count on the people who were going to help her find it.

She just wished she knew what was missing from this whole situation; why did Jared not know about the third Booth sibling, and why had she been buried in Ireland...?

And, more importantly, why would someone go to all that effort to bring her to America?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who feels that the information Angela found out about the card was too limited, keep in mind that Angel Investigations only had a web site for a brief period- Season Three's "Provider"; they pulled it after the additional advertising resulted in them dealing with a surplus of clients, particularly when a group of demons nearly cut off Fred's head so that their king could use it-, and otherwise relied more on 'word of mouth' and Cordelia's visions to get clients; she's not exactly going to just click on a site and find herself looking at Angel's online biography.
> 
> Next chapter; the face of the enemy- one of them, anyway- will be revealed...


	7. The Stakings in the Warehouse

As he stared grimly at the warehouse before him, Booth wondered if he should have picked up some additional firepower while he was at his flat; the stake launchers strapped around his wrists and the sword now hanging at his side fit as comfortably as they ever had despite the years since he'd used them, and the now-familiar weight of his gun on his side was reassuring even if he knew it was unlikely to be that much use, but he couldn't shake the idea that whatever he was about to run into needed more than this...

In the end, however, he didn't have a choice but to use what he had available to himself and hope for the best; without anyone at the Bureau or the Jeffersonian aware of his true past, he had to go with what he could carry and take things as they came. With his car- one of the older ones he restored as a hobby; a useful little 'quirk' he'd added to Booth to give himself access to a car people wouldn't think of associating with his new identity- parked a short distance away from the warehouse that the bar guests had identified as the location where the ritual would apparently be attempted, it was time for him to get back in the game and hope that, whatever was in there, it wasn't something he'd need help to put down.

As he walked into the warehouse, he quickly noted that it was fairly empty; apart from various empty boxes and a few old pieces of machine that must have been abandoned when the warehouse was in operation, the only thing showing any immediate signs of activity was an office area up some stairs at the other end of the room from the main entrance, a faint gleam of light coming from the office windows.

Keeping his senses alert as he walked, Booth wasn't surprised when a couple of vampires came charging out from behind some of the abandoned machines to rush towards him; whether the story of the ritual was accurate or not, something had definitely been recruiting members of Washington's demon population for some kind of purpose. For a moment he thought about using the stakes, but upon seeing his current opponents in the light offered by the warehouse's windows, he shifted tactics and quickly moved into action with his sword; given the evidently amateurish combat skills these two possessed, there was no point wasting the surprise advantage the stakes would offer until he needed it.

Decapitating the nearest vampire with a single blow, Booth continued his swing until he was facing the other vampire once again, subsequently impaling the charging vampire through the chest before using his opponent's momentum to hurl him over his head and into a small pile of boxes nearby. Crouching down beside his dazed and injured foe, Booth triggered one of his stake-launchers and rammed the wooden spike into the vampire's chest, quickly leaping back to his feet to dust another vampire that had just begun to charge towards him.

A quick glance was all Booth needed to confirm that he'd eliminated the last of his immediately-dangerous opponents, leaving him with just enough time to get to his feet before the two remaining vampires crossed the necessary few metres to reach him. Using their momentum against them, Booth grabbed their outstretched arms as they reached out to grab him and flung them into another pile of boxes just behind him, one vampire collapsing into dust as a box broke in just the right manner to impale him through his heart, the other trying to stagger back to his feet before Booth rammed a stake through his back, terminating what remained of his existence.

Booth barely had time to enjoy his victory- even with the amulet, winning that kind of fight this quickly was something to be proud of without his actual vampiric status and the length of time it had been since he fought like this- before he heard a loud roar behind him, turning around in time to see another large creature advancing towards him, a feral gleam in its red eyes. For a moment, Booth was surprised at the sight that greeted him- the horns clearly indicated a Fyarl demon, even if it was a bit unusual to see something that comparatively rare involved in something so basic-, but he didn't allow himself to be distracted for too long. Without any silver in his sword to guarantee that he'd manage to kill the thing in a direct fight, Booth quickly tossed his weapon to one side and pulled his gun out of its holster in practically the same motion, quickly firing most of the current clip into the Fyarl's head. As the creature staggered back, whatever passed for its brain damaged at least by the bullets, Booth dived to the ground, grabbed the sword by the hilt, and leapt back to his feet, swinging the sword in a powerful blow that took the Fyarl's head clean off, the horned skull flying off into a corner as the Fyarl collapsed to the ground.

Even as Booth paused for a moment to catch his breath- he'd done an impressive job, but without vampire stamina to support him, the adrenaline rush of the fight could only take him so far-, he allowed himself a nod of satisfaction at how quickly he'd managed to take the demon out. If his encounter with the Haxil beast had taught him anything- apart from making him realise how close he'd come to Cordelia since the two of them had left Sunnydale-, it was that even the seemingly-indestructible demons could be taken out without access to their weaknesses; you just had to do _enough_ damage to them...

* * *

  
As Hodgins parked his car on the corner of a street within visual distance of the warehouse- he'd picked up one of the larger ones from his garage so that they could travel together and limit the possibility of them being noticed; so long as they found the right spot they could still spy on the warehouse easily enough-, Brennan's eyes instantly fell on another car parked slightly closer to the building; even in the dim light, she had little trouble recognising the vehicle in question.

"Oh no..." she said, unable to stop herself voicing her shock at this latest turn of events.

"What?" Hodgins asked, looking anxiously back at her. "What's 'oh no'?"

"That car over there," Brennan said, indicating the vehicle in question- a black Plymouth convertible- with a slightly shocked expression of confusion, as though she wasn't certain if what she was about to say was accurate. "I can't be certain- it's been a while since I've seen it, and it's not exactly easy to make out at this distance-, but I think... well, if I'm right, it's Booth's."

" _What_?" Cam said, looking at Brennan incredulously. "As if a sister wasn't enough, now he's got a _car_ I didn't know about?"

"Hold on; he _did_ mention once that he liked restoring vintage cars in his spare time..." Hodgins began, looking uncertainly over at Brennan.

"Yes, I found him working on one once when I had to pick him up- it was his day off but we'd been given a case and he'd left a message saying where he could be reached-, and he was working on that car when I got there; I think I recognise the number-plate..." Brennan began, before she shook her head in frustration. "This doesn't make sense; why would he take _that_ car here...?"

"More to the point, how does he even know- assuming it _is_ him and someone else didn't just buy the car after he'd finished with it- that this is the right place to look?" Hodgins asked. "I don't know about you guys, but I know _I_ didn't tell him what I'd found-"

"Well, you wouldn't, would you?" Angela countered, looking over at the entomologist with a slightly grim smile. "No offence, but you _did_ kind of go against the one thing he _asked_ us to do with his sister's body-"

"Which might have been what he needed; am I the only one thinking that Booth showing up here on his own might not exactly be the smartest thing he's ever done?" Hodgins interjected, trying to avoid another debate about the ethics of his decision to ignore Booth's request any analyse Kathy's remains. "We still don't even know what's going on here-"

"Which is exactly why I'll be going on ahead to find out what _is_ going on here," Brennan said, pulling out the gun she'd picked up during a brief detour to her apartment as she reached over to open the car door beside her. "Just wait here-"

"Hold on; you want us to _what_?" Angela yelled, grabbing her friend's arm and practically hauling her back to face her. "We just came here to _watch_ -"

"If Booth's already in there, he might need help; if it's something I can't handle by myself, I'll come back out and call for back-up, I _promise_ ," Brennan said, hoping privately that Angela wouldn't notice the slight lie in her statement; she was fairly confident she could help Booth out if he _was_ in some kind of trouble on her own, she was just hoping that such a development wasn't the case.

"You can't go in _alone_ -!" Angela began.

"We're going into a potentially hostile building, and since I'm the only one of us armed-" Brennan began.

"Because the rest of us don't exactly _have_ guns available," Cam interjected with a grim stare at the anthropologist.

"The _point_ ," Brennan countered, returning Cam's stare with one of her own before her attention shifted back to Angela, "is that I'm the best person present to investigate what's going on there and be able to defend myself if something happens that we're not expecting; the rest of you..."

"We'll not exactly action heroes, huh?" Hodgins finished, rolling his eyes slightly as he sat back in the driver's seat, his eyes rolling upwards in frustration. "I _really_ need to work on that at some point..."

After a moment where she simply silently stared at her best friend- Hodgins had apparently resigned himself to accept Brennan's point and Cam didn't have anything to add-, Angela released her grip and nodded in resignation.

" _Fine_..." she said, her eyes flickering anxiously at their surroundings, the artist clearly unnerved by the darkness of their surroundings. "Just... don't take too long, OK?"

"I'll be back in five minutes at the most," Brennan replied, nodding reassuringly at Angela before she opened her door and began to hurry towards the warehouse, the gun in her hand as she anxiously took in her surroundings while advancing towards the building.

She just hoped that, if Booth _was_ in there, he wasn't in too much trouble; as much as she loved her friends, she wasn't exactly confident in their ability to help her rescue Booth from the kind of people who'd dig up a pre-teen girl's long-dead body just to send a message that none of them knew the purpose of...

* * *

  
After confirming that the Fyarl's head had just landed near a few boxes some distance away- he'd read up a bit on Fyarls after he'd heard about the time Ethan Rayne turned Giles into one (He and Buffy had only had irregular contact after he'd left Sunnydale, but the more unusual crises they'd encountered had prompted them to let the other know in case something similar happened in their cities), and knew that the bodies would dissolve eventually as their mucus consumed their bodily tissues-, Booth dragged the rest of the body over to another corner of the warehouse where nobody was likely to randomly stumble over it before he turned his attention back to the 'office' in front of him.

There didn't seem to be anyone else down here for him to deal with- his vision wasn't what it was, but the warehouse wasn't far enough away from the street lights for it to be so dark that he couldn't see _anything_ inside it-, and the fact that nobody had come from that office to investigate the commotion down in the main warehouse- he'd been quick, but he hadn't exactly been quiet even before pulling out his gun- could only mean that, either there was nobody up there, or whoever was up there _wanted_ him to go up to that office...

"Dammit," he muttered, slipping his gun back into its holster as he raised his sword once more; once again, he'd have to play by his unknown enemy's rules and hope that he had a few Booth-inspired tricks in his arsenal that his apparently Angel-originating adversary wouldn't be expecting. Carefully advancing up the stairs towards the office, Booth slowly opened the door, only to find nothing on the other side but yet another empty room. Apart from a few assorted and clearly empty boxes that had been recently moved around based on the dust on the floor, the only signs that anyone had used this room recently were a few candles on a desk near a window facing into the main warehouse, the candles the apparent source of the light he'd noticed earlier.

"Where _is_ everybody...?" Booth asked himself, anxiously testing the weight of his sword in his hands once again; it was becoming increasingly obvious that the ritual he'd heard about in the bar had been nothing but a red herring designed to lure him here, but even in that scenario there should still be somebody here to serve as the source of that fake trail in the first place...

"Oh, you're wondering about the ritual?" a voice said from behind him, a smug tone to its naggingly-familiar voice; Booth _knew_ that voice, but it seemed as though his subconscious mind thought that it sounded different in this context compared to how he'd heard it in the past. "Just a load of crap, I'm afraid; had to come up with _something_ to get you down here, after all."

"Me?" Booth repeated, one hand going for his gun in his holster as he tried to determine where the voice was addressing him from; even if the bullet didn't kill whoever or whatever this was, it _should_ slow the other guy down long enough for him to get in close enough to do more immediate damage with his sword...

His eyes fell on a slight movement in one shadowy corner of the office- he could train as much as he liked, but age and humanity meant that his night-vision would never be as good as it had been when he was Angel- and he quickly aimed his gun in that direction, his other hand holding tightly onto his sword in case something sneaked up behind him while he was distracted with the speaker.

"Show yourself," he said, hoping that he sounded more in control than he felt; after all the effort he'd gone through to escape his past as Angel, the idea that someone could just waltz in here and _know_ about everything he'd gone to so much effort to put behind him...

"Why not?" that same strangely-familiar voice said, a satisfied tone to it that Booth found frustratingly familiar. "After all, you made it this far, _and_ did a pretty good job down there despite being out of practise; it'd be a shame not to show you who you're dealing with..."

As the speaker emerged from the shadows, revealing features that were both familiar and unfamiliar to Booth, dressed in attire similar to his own, the special agent practically felt his heart stop beating from the shock.

_It's impossible..._

"What can I say?" the figure said, as it walked out of the shadows into a position where the candles could properly illuminate his face, eliminating any possibility of doubt on Booth's part as his enemy shot a satisfied smirk at the stunned FBI agent. "I'm back, baby!"

"No..." Booth whispered, his eyes wide in shock and incredulity at the sight before him, the candles on the table beside him and the moonlight from outside the warehouse windows now clearly illuminating the one man who _couldn't_ be standing there. "It can't be..."

"Oh, no," the other man said, nonchalantly walking across the short distance separating them, arms spread as though he wanted to ensure that Booth got the full view of everything he was up against. "Your old eyes do not deceive you, 'Boothy'! After all..." the man added, a slight smirk on his lips as he leaned over so that the two men were virtually nose-to-nose, "who'd know me better than you?"

Whether it was the nonchalant manner in which his unexpected adversary delivered that last statement, or simply the shock of seeing this man again after everything he'd put him through over the years, something inside Booth snapped. Roaring with a rage he'd rarely felt even as Angel, he lashed out with a powerful punch that sent his enemy flying into the wall, followed by him pulling out his gun- his sword now held only in his left hand- and unloading the remaining bullets from his current clip into the other man's body; even if they wouldn't kill his foe- particularly since they just struck him in the back; even with the punch he'd just received, the other guy was coherent enough to duck and protect his head with his arm-, they'd hurt, and that was the main thing right now.

"I don't know _how_ you crawled out of whatever Hell you were banished to," Booth practically roared as he stared at his enemy, a resolute finger pointing at his foe as he spoke to better emphasise his point, "but I swear to _God_ , I will _send you back there_!"

"Big words from a guy who's not even _half_ the man he used to be," his opponent countered, a nonchalant smirk on his face as he stood up, a slight wince the only sign that the last attack had done anything to him (Not that Booth was particularly surprised at that; he knew that even those injuries would only slow _this_ guydown for a few moments, but even those were welcome). "We drew back when we were _evenly_ matched; what makes you think you can stop me now?"

"Because," Booth practically growled, his fingers tightening over the sword that he now held in his hands, his gun now returned to its holster with his ammunition currently spent, " _last_ time we fought, I wasn't giving it my all..."

He just wished he felt as confident as he was trying to sound; his ability to do damage in any fight wasn't in question, but against _this_ guy, his ability to _survive_ the punishment he was almost certainly about to receive definitely was...

* * *

  
At first glance after she entered the warehouse, Brennan was surprised to note the lack of activity- even if they'd cleared out after leaving Kathy's body on the Jeffersonian's steps, you couldn't completely remove all the equipment involved in storing a body that fast-, but as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the large room she quickly noted a few damaged boxes in the area that had been broken in a manner that clearly suggested to her that there had been a fight here recently. For a moment, Brennan wondered if she was too late- apart from a few piles of dust, there didn't seem to be anything in this warehouse that she hadn't been expecting to find-, but then her eyes fell on an illuminated window of a small office at the back of the warehouse, two silhouettes visible against the window as they apparently exchanged blows, and caution was the last thing in Brennan's thoughts.

She couldn't tell which combatant was Booth from this distance- and she couldn't even be sure that one of the people fighting was him-, but that didn't matter right now; even if the fight she was looking at it just turned out to be some internal power struggle between two members of whatever group had dug Kathy up in the first place, she might be able to convince one of them to give her some answers about what was going on here.

"STOP!" she yelled as she hurried up the stairs leading to the open door of the room, her gun out in front of her even as her eyes automatically took in the sight awaiting her as she reached the door in question. She was momentarily relieved to see that Booth was inside the room- at least she didn't have to worry about figuring out who was more likely to answer her questions-, but that relief was automatically tempered by the sight of him lying on the ground near a table with various candles on it, dressed in a long black leather coat and a dark shirt stained with a glistening substance that could only be blood.

Almost against her will, Brennan's eyes moved to take in the other man standing over her partner, dressed in a coat identical to the one that Booth was wearing, as he turned to look at her, a casual smirk on the face of Booth's attacker as though he thought that beating Booth like that had been somehow _funny_ and he was wondering if she'd get-

Brennan froze.

 _No_...

It was _impossible_...

She'd never encountered anything that couldn't be explained before- even that dissolving body had a rational explanation in the end-, but while she could think of a reason for what she now saw in front of her, the odds against it happening in this situation were almost impossible.

The man who had just been attempting to apparently beat Booth to death, the man who almost certainly the person responsible for dumping the body of a young girl who couldn't be Booth's sister even when Booth's own words had identified her as such, the man who was now looking at her with a sadistic gleam that she hadn't seen directed at her since Howard Epps had asked her how it felt to kill a man...

He had _Booth's_ face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: It's not a dream, not a hallucination, not an illusion, or any other kind of fake you care to think of; Angelus is back, and it's no laughing matter...
> 
> 2: To anyone wondering why Booth just shot Angelus when he had his sword in his hands, he reasoned that the sword would be too large and would be comparatively easier for Angelus to block, but the 'x-factor' of his souled counterpart using modern weapons might be enough to through him off-balance for a time


	8. The Men with One Face

"Well well well..." the man with Booth's face said, grinning at her for a moment as he looked her over with a malicious gleam that just felt _wrong_ to Brennan when seeing it on Booth's face. "Look who's here; Doctor Temperance 'Bones' Brennan, the woman who made my 'normal' life all the more complicated."

"No..." Brennan whispered, shaking her head in denial as she staggered back from the sight in front of her, only coming to a halt when she felt the wall of the small room pressing against her back.

This couldn't be happening; the idea of a doppelganger might not be scientifically impossible- there were only so many facial combinations that could be created by genetics before someone ended up having the same face as somebody else, even if the world and history were both large enough that the odds of someone meeting their other self were relatively low-, but the odds that she would not only encounter a doppelganger in this manner, but that it would be the face of somebody she _knew_... that the other person would try to-

"Oh no, _Bones_ ," the man with Booth's face said, his face and voice somehow twisting the nickname that Brennan had secretly come to like and making it sound like a curse as he walked towards her, a slightly predator aspect to his movement as though he was a feral animal of some kind stalking his prey, "you're not going to 'logic' your way out of this one, Miss Forensic Anthropolo-whatever... and you _really_ go on about your qualifications, don't you?"

"You're not-!" Brennan began.

"What; not your lover-boy over there?" the man responded, indicating where Booth- and it _was_ Booth; putting aside the lack of reason for him to treat her this coldly even if someone else was watching them, Booth wasn't capable of looking at anybody the way this man was looking at her, as though he was just trying to work out the most amusing way to mutilate her- lay bleeding on the floor, apparently trying to get back to his feet. "True, I'm not him in the sense _you're_ thinking of, but in terms of the little things that make him who he is?"

The man smirked. "Let's just say I know things about him even _you_ don't know..."

* * *

  
As he lay on the floor, temporarily forgotten by his enemy in favour of the newer, more vulnerable target of Bones- and _how_ had she managed to find this place so quickly?-, Booth cursed his inability to keep a hold of his sword, but there'd been nothing else that he could do; Angelus had hit him too quickly for him to do much more than deflect the worst of the vampire's assaults.

He might know _what_ Angelus would do in a fight relatively easily after they'd pretty much shared a consciousness for the better part of a hundred years- they'd both learned how to fight from the same sources, after all-, but he was still unprepared for just how much difference his vampire self's strength and speed made to the equation; Angelus had even known how to counter a few hand-to-hand tricks he'd picked up as _Booth_ , for crying out loud...

Forcing his thoughts back on track- wondering how his greatest nightmare and personal enemy had come back to life as an independent entity aware of stuff that had happened after they'd 'split' was a mystery, but it wasn't something he _needed_ to solve right now-, Booth forced the pain in his limbs aside as he tried to check his surroundings for something that could help him.

Angelus might have demonstrated a few tricks that he hadn't been expecting in their fight, but if he knew his other self as well as he thought he did- a few extra skills didn't change who Angelus _was_ , after all-, there was still a _chance_ that he could get him to back off before the guy did something serious to Bones, even if his current condition pretty much ruled out any thought of further combat...

* * *

  
Brennan wished that she could figure out the rational explanation behind the situation she found herself in- there had to be _some_ explanation; Booth wouldn't have just not mentioned the fact that he had a psychotic twin brother or something like that-, but so far she was coming up empty, even if the simple terror she felt at the sight of the man in front of her probably helped to account for that...

"You know," the second Booth said, smirking at her as he looked her up and down in a disturbingly appraising manner, the same Epps-esque gleam in his eyes that she just couldn't stop herself seeing, "I'll give you this for nothing; you _really_ screwed him up with some of your 'stunts', you know that?"

"I never-" Brennan began almost automatically (Booth might have 'earned' the right to personally criticise her occasional moments of social ignorance, but this man had earned nothing of the sort) before her awareness of the evident psychotic mental state of the man in front of her prompted her to remain silent; the last thing she wanted was to provoke an obvious sociopath.

"I mean, asking _him_ to father your kid so that you could be sure he'd be there for you?" Epps-Booth asked, rolling his eyes nonchalantly as though he was explaining how to breathe to an idiot, continuing to talk as though he hadn't even heard her attempts to interrupt. "Don't get me wrong, you're not as good at it as Darla was- she drove him to the point where he locked a bunch of lawyers in a wine cellar with her even when they _asked_ him to help them before he went and set her on fire-, but she just hung around to freak him out when he thought she was still dead; _you_ weren't even trying, and all you had to do was keep on going on about how he didn't _have_ to be involved to keep up your emotional barriers so that you didn't have to actually _admit_ that you need him."

"It's not _like_ that-" Brennan tried to say, shaking her head weakly even as she wondered who 'Darla' was and why she'd done something like that to Booth (She wasn't even going to consider the possibility that Booth had done what this man had implied he'd done to those lawyers- he would _not_ leave anyone somewhere where they would be murdered no matter what they had done-, but there had to be something real in that last statement given the confident manner with which the man had brought the incident up; something was _really_ strange here...).

"What are you trying to do, anyway?" Booth's doppelganger continued, a casual smirk on his face as though he actually found the current topic amusing. "Just see how much he can take of how weird you are to know if he's 'worth it', or push him away _yourself_ so you can be on your own again without actually _telling_ him to get lost so you can tell yourself that he's just another member of the group of people who'll leave you? I mean, you're harder for him to predict than-"

A sudden subtle click from behind this terrifying monster with her partner's face cut off their 'conversation' even before Brennan could try and think of a response- mainly because she wasn't sure what she could say; everything 'Booth-Epps' was saying made sense, but she couldn't believe that Booth could feel that way about her _or_ confide those feelings to someone so clearly insane-, prompting both her and this strange man in front of her to turn around and stare at the source of the sound.

For a moment, Brennan allowed herself to feel relieved at the sight of Booth sitting up and aiming a gun in his doppelganger's direction, but the tremor in the gun-barrel and the grimace of pain on his face made it clear that he was fighting to maintain even the obviously basic target he'd established on the other man. Given how close the man with Booth's face was to her, Booth probably couldn't shoot without running the risk that the bullet would hit her, and if she tried to get out of the way the other man would probably try and stop her...

"Let. Her. _Go_ ," Booth said, his tone level as he glared at his double, betraying no signs of the pain his wounds must be causing him.

" _That's_ your best effort?" 'Booth-Epps' said, chuckling slightly as he looked at Brennan's injured partner, clearly unconcerned about Booth's admittedly weak attempt at a threat. "What are you going to do; shoot me? Even if that would do any good, you can't exactly _aim_ in your condition and this light-"

"I don't need to aim," Booth said, suddenly moving the gun from its original position in front of him so that the barrel was pointing at his temple. "I just need to pull the trigger."

"NO!" Brennan screamed; she couldn't believe what Booth was even thinking of doing, that went against everything he'd always said he believed in...

"You won't do it," his doppelganger said, apparently nonchalant about the fact that someone with his face was threatening to kill himself (Brennan was just becoming increasingly confused at this whole turn of events; one minute this man was trying to beat Booth to death, and the next he seemed to be talking as though he and Booth spent time together in a social environment). "I _know_ you, remember-?"

"You sure about that?" Booth countered, no trace of doubt or fear in his voice as he stared at the other man, the gun steady as it rested against his forehead with his finger around the trigger. "We both know that part of the reason you do this is the thrill of seeing your main 'target' suffer, and you'd want me to suffer more than anyone after everything that I did to you over the years. I take myself out of the equation..."

He paused for a moment, a contemplative expression on his face as though he was making sure that he phrased what he was about to say correctly, before he spoke again. "Well, I get that their chances still aren't _great_ , but you _do_ lose the main reason you're going all this in the first place; if I can't beat you, might as well cheat you of _that_ little victory..."

For a moment, as Brennan stood silently up against the wall, she could only hold her breath at the sight of her partner holding his own gun to his forehead, the man with Booth's face staring grimly back at the FBI agent...

 _This isn't happening_ , she thought to herself, hoping that the sheer irrationality of this entire situation meant that she was just having an extremely vivid dream rather than experiencing actual events. _This can't be real... it's a dream... Booth would never even_ think _about killing himself to stop somebody... it_ has _to be a nightmare_...

"Fine," 'Booth-Epps' said at last, shaking his head in resignation as he stared at Booth. "You won _this_ round, 'Angel'..."

Before Brennan could ask what the other man meant by that, he turned to look at her, slamming one hand against the wall beside her head as he leaned in closer to her.

"By the way," the doppelganger said, the same arrogant smirk still on his face as he looked at her, "just so you know what name to use when you're begging me not to kill you later... I'm Angelus."

With that, the man with Booth's face turned around and literally dived arms-first through the office's small window, leaving Booth and Brennan alone in the office.

"Thank _God_..." Booth said, lowering his gun as he collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily as he looked up at her. "That was _way_ too close..."

"Booth...?" Brennan began, trying to re-organise her thoughts as she looked at her partner in confusion, her normal control shaken by the sheer impossibility of what she'd just witnessed. "What happened... what are... who _was_ that?"

"His name... is Angelus," Booth replied, wincing as he slowly hauled himself forward so that he could use the table to lift himself back onto his feet, his expression grim as he kept his eyes fixed on the anthropologist. "And trust me... if I hadn't done that, he'd have killed you... in the most painful way he could think of... for the heck of it."

The sheer simplicity of Booth's last statement almost made Brennan feel sick.

She wasn't sure if it was the fact that Booth was talking about his apparently exact double or the fact that he made that last statement so calmly that disturbed her the most, but it was becoming increasingly clear that there was something _very_ dangerous going on here...

What had Booth done to that other man that would make him hate Booth so much?

Why did the other man look so much like Booth?

And had he been telling the truth when he said that Booth had locked a woman who was almost certainly a killer- judging by the context of that statement, anyway- in a room full of lawyers before setting that woman on fire?

* * *

  
"Look, Angela, are you _sure_ this is a good idea?" Hodgins asked, looking anxiously around himself as he followed his ex-fiancé- and when would that thought stop _hurting_?- into the warehouse that Brennan had entered earlier. Despite Cam's attempt to compromise by accompanying them to a position closer to the warehouse after Brennan had left, Angela had quickly decided to follow her friend after a couple of minutes had gone by with no sound of activity inside the building, leaving Hodgins with no choice but to follow her while Cam remained outside to get help if the need arose. "I mean, I get that there's nobody _fighting_ here, but-"

"Bren wouldn't have stayed in here for this long if there was _nothing_ to find, Jack; the fact that she hasn't called us might just means that she got too caught up with what she was doing to let anyone else know-" Angela began, only to be interrupted by the sound of a breaking window. Glancing up in the direction of the sound, Angela and Jack were shocked to see a male figure, dressed in a long black leather coat, apparently dive out of the window, the figure landing on the ground in a heap.

"What the-?" Hodgins began.

" _Booth_!" Angela yelled, hurrying over to crouch down beside the figure; now that Hodgins looked, the light from the warehouse windows around them did make it relatively clear that the figure was the secret agent in question. "What the hell are you _doing_ here; are you-?"

Angela's questions ended when Booth, moving with a speed and ease that Hodgins had never expected a man could show after sustaining the kind of hard impact that Booth had just taken, leapt back to his feet, his right arm tightly wrapped around Angela's neck as he grinned at the forensic entomologist.

"Hi there," Booth said, a sadistic gleam in his eyes as he spoke that Hodgins had never even thought of the other man as being capable of expressing; even when he'd considered Booth just another government stooge, he'd never thought of the guy as a _killer_ (Taking people out as a sniper was one thing; this guy looked like he'd kill them with his bare hands just to watch them die). "Nice of you to show up; last meeting went by too quickly for me to really enjoy it."

"Booth, what the-?" Hodgins began, only to find himself suddenly pinned to the nearest intact box as Booth- _Booth_ , for crying out loud!- held him up by the throat with one arm, Angela staring in shock at the sight even as their attacker's other arm tightened around her neck.

"Right face, wrong name, _Hodgy_ ," Booth smirked, his grip on their necks tightening as they looked in shock and fear at each other. "I'm what you get when you take the 'Booth' out of the equation... and trust me, everything you thought _he_ was at his worst? I can top it."

"Booth..." Angela gasped, a slight tremor in her voice the only sign of the fear she had to be feeling in this situation. "Don't... this isn't you-"

"That's where you're wrong, Ange," Booth interrupted, a casual smile on his face as he looked at the artist, his tongue tracing his lips in a disturbing predatory manner as he looked at her. "I'm me for the first time in years... and I am _really_ going to enjoy this little game..."

For a moment, as Hodgins felt the fingers around his neck- unusually cool fingers at that; it wasn't exactly warm out, but this guy must have some kind of medical condition; his fingers almost seemed to be room temperature at best-, he thought that the man was going to break his neck, but then the grip on his throat was released and he was left to drop to the ground, gasping for air as he looked shakily up at where Booth- or whoever this was; this guy _couldn't_ be their government 'pain-in-the-neck'- still held Angela, stepping away from the wall as he turned the artist around so that both his hands were on her shoulders as she stared directly at him.

"You know," the other man said, smirking as he looked at Angela with an expression that left the artist feeling like a piece of meat, "he's always _wondered_ what you'd taste like; might as well satisfy his curiosity..."

Before Angela could say anything to that bizarre statement, the man who was increasingly obviously not Booth leaned over and kissed her directly on the mouth, his tongue penetrating her lips as his hands forced her head to remain in position as he practically plundered his way around her teeth.

"GET OFF-!" Hodgins began, scrambling to his feet as he tried to charge towards the two of them, only for her 'attacker'- if he could be called that for doing nothing more damaging to her than possibly bruising her lips- stepped back and casually struck Hodgins with an open-handed blow that knocked the entomologist flat on his back, wincing as he clutched at his bruised chest.

Angela's initial scream of fear for her ex-fiancé was muffled by her attacker's lips, but then the man stepped back and shoved her away from him as though she was just something that had been in his way, leaving the artist sprawling on the ground alongside Hodgins.

"Not too shabby," 'Booth' replied as he stepped back, a self-satisfied smirk on his face as he looked at the forensic artist, Angela only able to tremble as she looked up at the man who looked so like someone she'd always trusted to protect her dearest friend. "Could use a bit of muscle there, of course, but we can't all be fighters like the last two, after all..."

He licked his lips as he looked between the two downed Jeffersonian employees, his fingers flexing as though he was contemplating which one of them he'd kill next, before he shrugged nonchalantly.

"Well," he said, indicating the door behind them with a wave of his hand, "it's been fun, but I've got to go; no point having all my fun _that_ quickly, right?"

With that, the figure turned around and ran out of the warehouse, moving at such a rapid rate that neither of his near-victims would have believed that he'd just jumped out of a high window if they hadn't seen it with their own eyes.

"Oh my God..." Hodgins said after a moment's pause, his mind trying and failing to comprehend what had just taken place, the fact that Angela was clearly just as confused as he was bringing him no comfort whatsoever. "Booth... Booth just tried to _kill_ us..."

"Actually," the voice that had just been mocking them said, its owner having somehow run around behind them- the fact that the voice sounded fatigued made that scenario slightly more plausible than it might have been even if Angela and Hodgins were both fairly sure there wasn't a door behind them that he could have used-, "that was... someone else."

"What the-?" Hodgins began, turning to directly address Booth, only for his hostility to falter at the sight of Doctor Temperance Brennan half-carrying the battered and bleeding form of Seeley Booth down the stairs from the office where the other man had jumped out.

"Huh?" the entomologist concluded after a brief confused pause, looking in confusion between the man standing before them and the open door behind him- he actually thought he could just make out the black-clad figure running down the street, but he couldn't be sure-, trying to figure out what he could say to this development that wouldn't sound stupid. "But... but he-"

"Angelus," Booth interrupted, releasing his grip on Brennan's shoulder as he moved slightly away from her; there was a slight wince as he was left supporting himself on his own once again, but he pushed it down so quickly it was hard to notice it. "He's... it's complicated."

"An... Angelus?" Angela repeated, looking at the agent in confusion, clearly trying to find the words for what she wanted to say. "His name's... he's... Booth... who _is_ he?"

* * *

  
As he looked at the artist, her neck sporting faint bruises and fearful tears in her eyes, Booth was briefly tempted to answer her question...

But he couldn't.

Not only did they need at least _some_ time out after getting attacked like that- it had been hard enough for Buffy and her friends to cope with Angelus's initial assault and at least half of them had already been suspicious of him due to his vampiric status-, but they were scientists, first and foremost; if he _was_ going to tell them everything, he'd need to provide evidence if he was going to convince them that he wasn't crazy.

"I'll tell you tomorrow," he replied.

" _Tomorrow_?" Bones repeated incredulously. "Booth, he-"

"Bones, you just saw a man with my face jump out of that office window, land on the ground with no obvious sign that he sustained any injury, and then not only have the strength to attack Hodgins and Angela, but be well enough to run away without even a _limp_ \- and not exactly moving at a slow speed on top of that-, and you're still asking 'who' rather than 'what'," Booth interrupted, turning around to look at her with an intensity that was only aided by his battered condition rather than being hampered by it. "Anything I tell you now to answer that question you won't believe without evidence, so I'm going to go off and _get_ that evidence; we'll talk about this when I can give you proof I'm not nuts."

He just hoped that Bones didn't see the slight lie in his last statement; Angelus's return had thrown him for a loop, but he needed to give her the impression that he had at least _some_ idea of what he was doing if he was going to reassure her.

And if Angelus's return was the handiwork of who he thought was responsible for it...

He wouldn't give her any more reason to panic than he had to; things were going to be bad enough until they managed to put him down.

* * *

  
If it had been anyone else making that statement, Brennan would have already considered them 'nuts' (And she'd never understood what nuts had to do with a person's mental state), but after everything she and Booth had been through together...

Even if the mere appearance of the man they'd just fought proved that there was more going on here than just an old enemy of Booth's with a grudge, when taking into account some of the things the other man had said about Booth's past, coupled with Booth's own reaction to the man's presence, there was definitely _something_ going on here that she needed to know about, and Booth would never conceal knowledge from her unless he felt certain that he had to do so (The incident with his faked funeral didn't count; _Sweets_ was the one who'd kept the secret then).

"All... all right," she said, nodding thoughtfully at him. "I'll... well, we'll see you at the Jeffersonian tomorrow?"

"In your office," Booth said, before he turned to look at Angela and Hodgins as well. "And you two should probably be there too-"

"'Probably'?" Hodgins practically spat, glaring indignantly at Booth. "We just nearly got strangled by your evil twin; you'd better _believe_ we're going to be there-!"

"Good," Booth said, apparently unfazed by Hodgins's rant as he turned to look at Angela. "You OK?"

"Just... well, a bit... shaken, really," she said, swallowing slightly as she looked at Booth. "I mean... that guy... he was..."

"He does that," Booth said grimly. "Don't worry, though; so long as you stay inside your house, you'll be safe until the morning."

With that unusual statement, he turned back to look at Brennan. "I'll see you tomorrow, Bones."

Brennan couldn't even bring herself to say anything further as Booth turned around and walked out of the warehouse and back towards the car they'd seen earlier, a purpose in his stance as he walked that made it clear that he wouldn't respond well to any further questions at this time.

She didn't know what Booth would have to tell them about 'Angelus' tomorrow- and where had the man acquired a name like that?-, but she strongly doubted that it was going to be encouraging...

* * *

  
From the top of a nearby building, a figure dressed in a long black coat watched with a casual smile as Booth got back into his car and drove away, closely followed by the sight of the slightly-battered Jeffersonian staff heading to a large car a short distance down the street and departing themselves.

His hand might have been revealed a bit ahead of his pre-planned schedule, but he could accommodate that; he just needed to make sure Booth didn't go through with his 'threat'- it might have been a bluff, but there was no way to be sure and he'd rather not take the chance just yet; the game was still too new for him to want to abandon it just yet-, and the best way to do _that_ was simple enough...

Angelus smiled at the thought of what he had planned

_Time to pay a visit to the doctor..._


	9. A Supernatural Side to the Special Agent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: And here you have it; the morning after, as Booth faces the task of revealing the truth about the world he was once a part of to the friends he's made in his new one...
> 
> 2: Given subsequent revelations about Booth's past here, I feel obligated to make another comment about Season Five continuity here; the episode with Booth's grandfather visiting never happened (or at least Hank never visited even if the case happend), as otherwise it just creates too many potential issues for the Jeffersonian staff to confront Booth about

As she sat in her office the next morning, Brennan wished that she didn't feel as tired as she did; after everything that had happened to her and her friends the previous night, she had found it incredibly difficult to get back to sleep. Virtually every time she'd tried to doze off, she'd found herself woken up by dream-visions of Booth lying on the ground, his own gun pointing at his head while Angelus- and where did that twisted lunatic get the idea to call himself 'Angelic'?- held her prisoner...

Even knowing that dreams were irrational manifestations, Brennan still felt like throwing up every time she woke up as that dream concluded with the sight of Booth's brain splattering over the nearest wall after he'd shot himself, the smug chuckle of Angelus in her ear momentarily confirming her fear that Booth's sacrifice had been pointless before she remembered that none of that had happened. She'd only briefly glimpsed Angela and Hodgins as she walked in- they'd agreed to act like nothing unusual had happened last night until Booth could provide them with answers and they had a better idea of what they were dealing with-, but while Hodgins' expression gave no trace of his feelings, Angela seemed to be slightly paler than usual, and kept reaching up to rub her neck with one hand as though she still felt the bruises from Angelus's attack even several hours since it had happened.

She didn't exactly blame her friend for her fear, she had to admit; no matter how much she tried to rationalise Angelus's resemblance to Booth as nothing but a biological coincidence, something about his attitude towards Booth gave the impression that it was far more than that...

"Hey, Bones," a voice said from her office door, prompting her to glance up and see Booth standing there, a backpack on his back and a slightly awkward smile on his face.

"Booth?" she said, looking curiously at him. "What's-?"

"Just give me a minute," Booth said, stepping slightly to the side as Angela, Hodgins and Doctor Saroyan walked in after him. Closing the door behind him, Booth locked the door and then turned to face the others as they gathered around the chairs and table in the office, swinging the backpack around and placing it on the table in front of them.

If it had been any other situation, than the idea of Booth acting like a professor about to give a lecture to her and the rest of her team might have been somewhat amusing, but given that the topic of this lesson would almost certainly involve Angelus, Brennan was far from comforted at the implications of the current situation.

If Booth knew enough about Angelus that he felt the 'need' to go to these kind of lengths to talk about his double, what did that mean regarding what Angelus had claimed to know about _Booth_...?

* * *

  
"OK," Booth said, looking solemnly at the group around him as he went over his makeshift 'speech' in his mind- he might have worked with Giles and Wesley to varying degrees for eight years, but that didn't mean he knew how to do what they did-, "if I'm going to do this, I need you to trust me on a few key issues; I'm not lying to you, I'm not playing a joke on you, I'm not trying to hide some screwy government conspiracy from you- apart from what I _do_ reveal to you, anyway-, and my mental health is as good as it's ever been. Understood?"

After the Jeffersonian staff had exchanged glances with each other, they all turned back to Booth and nodded their consent to his instruction.

"Right then," Booth said, as he stared at the group now gathered around him, taking a deep breath to prepare himself before he began his speech. "Firstly, you're going to have to forget everything you thought you knew about the scientific evolution of the world into its current state."

"Huh?" Hodgins said, looking in surprise at Booth. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, dinosaurs were probably involved in the past- I had to help an old girlfriend and her team stop some things that were technically resurrected dinosaurs a few months before we broke up-, but, between them and humanity, Earth was populated by the Old Ones," Booth continued, his expression grim as he took in their reactions; they might look sceptical, but they seemed to be willing to keep listening to whatever he had to say for the moment. "They were powerful demons who engaged in war the same way we'd breathe, but they eventually virtually drove themselves to destruction to the point where they had to abandon this dimension, leaving only various assorted part-human demons behind them, including a demon race created by the infusion of a demon's blood with a human corpse, resulting in..."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, I'm sure I don't need to tell you what kind of supernatural creature relies on blood for its survival, right?"

After a moment's stunned silence, Cam finally broke it.

"Hold on; _vampires_?" she said, looking incredulously at him. "You're asking us to-"

In response, Booth opened one of the books on his table and indicated the illustration on the resulting page.

"Oh my God..." Cam said, the former coroner's objects cut short at the sight in front of her; Booth's face, with longer hair in a style that she'd never seen him have, dressed in a suit that would have been better suited in the eighteenth century. For a moment, the other three turned to look hopefully at Angela, but a shake of her head and solemn expression on her face confirmed that the drawing and the book were as old as it appeared to be.

"Hold on a minute..." Hodgins said, his eyes flicking between the book and the agent he'd known for years. "Are you saying...?"

"In 1727, Liam Gallagher was born," Booth continued, standing up as the squints studied the image before them in shock, showing no sign of responding to Hodgins' query before he was ready. "His little sister, Kathy, was born in 1741, after their mother went through a series of miscarriages; he lived a relatively normal life for the first twenty-six or so years of his existence, dissatisfied with his Catholic father's failing silk and linen business, until his arguments with his father escalated to the point where he was thrown out of the house. He spent the next few nights drinking and whoring his way through an unremarkable life in the local taverns... until Darla came to him."

"Darla?" Angela asked.

"It means 'Dear One'," Booth replied. "She was the favoured childe- by which I mean that she was turned into a vampire herself by this guy- of the Master, one of the oldest and most dangerous vampires to ever live; she turned Liam into a vampire that night, and, when he rose from his grave, one of his first acts was to slaughter his family... and he then became known as 'Angelus', the demon with the angelic face, and one of the vampires who would come to be known as the 'Scourge of Europe'."

"Oh," Angela said, her voice small as she looked uncertainly at Booth. "So... are you saying... you're Liam's... ancestor?"

"No," Booth said, shaking his head grimly. "I'm not _descended_ from Liam; I _was_ Liam."

Silence filled the office after that statement, until Brennan spoke.

"Are you... feeling all right, Booth?" she asked, looking awkwardly at her partner. "I mean, all this-"

"Are you saying I _faked_ an authentic mid-nineteenth-century book to a point where all four of you could at least _think_ it's the real thing at first glance just to support my delusion?" Booth said, his eyes fixed on Brennan as he spoke. "This is _real_ , Bones; demons, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and magic all exists, and I lived in that world as one of history's most ruthless vampires for over a century and a half-"

"Hold on a minute; you're a _hundred and fifty_?" Cam interjected, looking incredulously at him.

"No, I'm not," Booth said.

"Oh, thank God-" Cam began.

"Counting human years, I'm almost three hundred," Booth finished (He briefly thought about mentioning his time in Hell, but decided otherwise- it didn't really count as a time when he'd grown to any significant degree given that he'd just spent all his time down there being tortured-; if she'd forgotten the year of birth he'd provided for her earlier, Cam was clearly having enough trouble processing this information without trying to include the afterlife in her current information).

"Booth," Brennan began, looking at him with the same anxious expression she'd had on her face when she first began to suspect the existence of his tumour "I don't know what-"

"Bones, you _saw_ what Angelus did last night; even if he _didn't_ look like me, you can't just go around saying that something doesn't exist because it doesn't fit your world view, OK?" Booth said, looking resolutely at her. "I get that this is hard to accept-"

"There's no such thing as demons; evil's just a _concept_ , Booth-" Brennan began.

"Sometimes it is," Booth interrupted, his tone solemn as he looked at her, trying to ignore the desperation on her face that perfectly represented the reason why he hadn't wanted to tell her about this side of the world; it was being done to protect her, but he was still disrupting everything she thought she knew about the world she'd lived in all her life. "Even in the worst humans I've met, they still had some moments where they could be better than that; one guy I knew consistently chose the worst path when faced with a choice but still went out of his way to help me save a bunch of kids when his employers wanted them dead, and before that I knew a guy who'd spent a hundred years planning to basically destroy the world who was also the closest thing to a father a scared rebellious orphan ever had..."

He paused for a moment, swallowing slightly awkwardly at that memory- even if he'd made up for it later, the recollection of just how badly he'd screwed up with Faith back in Sunnydale always hurt- before he continued speaking. "And sometimes you meet beings who lost the ability to even contemplate doing good long before they even had a chance to do so; an ancient vampire who simply sought the release of demonic hoards upon Earth just for the honour of being the one to destroy humanity, a group overseeing their agenda to further man's inhumanity to man because it gave them power no matter who they hurt getting there..."

Looking at the group around him, he was grateful to see that he still had their attention; they might not believe his words right now, but at least they weren't deriding him as crazy.

"So... what were you _like_... as a... vampire?" Angela asked at last, her speech slow and each word carefully chosen as though she was trying to give Booth a chance to correct her statement.

"Let me put it this way," Booth said grimly. "If evil had a face, you could make a pretty good argument for the fact that Angelus was it; everything I did back then, I did simply because I wanted to do it for the sheer sadism of it. I had no higher belief in anything beyond myself, more than half of my victims were chosen totally at random, anyone who saw me as a rival I generally saw as just someone who was there without being any particular threat to me..."

He shook his head slightly as he looked down, trying to think of the best way to express what he was about to say, before he looked up in cold resolution. "To put it in a nutshell, I was the worst kind of serial killer back then; I killed who I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, with no pattern or motive behind who I chose to kill or how I killed them, only doing it for the sake of doing it and leaving it at that."

The silence that greeted that statement was actually almost welcome to Booth; the fact that nobody knew how to react at least meant that they didn't think he was going to start doing anything to _them_ , even if the reason for the lack of action could have been disbelief in what he was telling them as much as it could be the result of their faith in him.

"But... look, I know I got on your case once or twice back in the day about government cover-ups, but how bad could _you_ be as a vampire?" Hodgins asked, a slightly awkward smile on his face that suggested to Booth that the other man was trying to deny what he'd witnessed last night. "I mean, you're just... you're not _that_ kind of guy."

At any other time, Booth would have been slightly touched at Hodgins' nonexplicit faith in him- they'd had a few rough patches back when they started working together, but they'd evidently come through the worst of it if the anti-government Hodgins had _that_ kind of faith in him, even if his obvious scepticism about the supernatural aspect of Booth's current story was still a problem.

It wasn't that Booth _blamed_ him for it- Sunnydale denial of facts that could save your life was one thing, but this was something that completely uprooted virtually everything Hodgins had spent his life studying and learning about the world he lived in-, but he didn't have the time or patience to be nice to Hodgins right now; he had a point to make, and he was going to ensure Hodgins and the rest of the squints understood what they were up against before he stopped trying to make.

"It wasn't as hard as you might think," he said, looking solemnly around the room before his eyes settled on Bones, hating the idea of destroying the image she'd formed of his past even as he knew it was necessary. "I wasn't a saint before I became a vampire- drinking all night, sex with so many women I don't even remember their faces, disappointing my father's expectations that I had no interest in following up; only thing I ever cared about back then was Kathy-, but after I was turned I... I became a monster."

He paused for a moment, before he turned around and walked over to stand over Brennan's desk, clasping its edges in his hands as he addressed the wall, unable to look at the people he'd come to consider a new family as he destroyed every idea they'd ever had about him. "I spent a hundred and fifty years brutally murdering practically _everyone_ I met in various brutal ways, with torment ranging from physical to psychological; the people I _didn't_ kill were left alive because it was more _fun_ that way-"

"Uh... fun?" Cam said, raising a hand uncertainly as she looked at Booth, her eyes constantly flicking towards the door as though she was trying ot determine how long it would take her to run for it if Booth snapped. "How was leaving them alive... 'fun'?"

"Oh, leaving a man in a lunatic asylum just sane enough to know that his three-year-old son's going to grow up thinking that his father had a mental breakdown and killed his mother had a certain... appeal to me back then," Booth said, a grim smirk on his face at the memory as he glanced over at Cam, the sadistic part of him that he'd never been able to quite shake off unable to restrain a grim smile as he took in the group's reactions to this news about his past.

He might hate to dispel their illusions about him, but if it helped them understand what they were up against, he could cope with Bones feeling disappointed in what he'd been back then...

"So... what happened for the other half of your life?" Angela asked at last, looking awkwardly at him, an apprehensive expression warring with the slight gleam of hope he could see in the corner of her eyes. "I mean, you said that you spent a hundred and fifty years like... well, like _that_..."

"And you're wondering what I did for the other hundred and fifty, right?" Booth finished for her. "Well, the first twenty-six years were just my human years- I wasn't exactly perfect, but I also wasn't really _harming_ anyone apart from a string of broken hearts and my father's own frustration with me-, but after almost a century and a half of torture and murder throughout Europe, I made my biggest mistake."

"Which was...?" Hodgins asked uncertainly.

"I fed on a girl who was a member of a clan of Romany gypsies," Booth replied. "She was barely a teenager, but she was a favourite among her clan, and they knew full well who'd killed her. They wanted me to suffer the same eternal torment that they felt at her loss... so they restored my soul."

"Your soul?" Bones asked, looking at Booth with the look Booth had come to recognise as her 'religious scepticism' expression. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"When you become a vampire, your soul is taken and your body is animated by a demon," Booth explained. "The demon has access to your memories, your thoughts, your feelings- basically, almost everything that made you _you_ -, but its ability to relate to others and express whatever feelings you had for them is twisted and perverted, so that, for example, a shy bookworm becomes a sadistic dominatrix, a pious Catholic becomes sexually forward, or a devoted mother suggests that her son had an Oedipus Complex..."

He paused for a moment, looking around the room to make sure that everyone was paying attention to him, before he finished his current explanation. "And, even if you _feel_ like yourself, you also lose every trace of your conscience, and are left as nothing more than a tool to something out to destroy everything you stood for by using your knowledge and skills against the people you cared about and the world you left behind you."

He allowed himself another moment of silence as he looked at the group gathered around him, his gaze finally settling on Bones as he said the most crucial words in his current explanation. "I didn't know where I was for the first moments after they restored my soul to me... and then I was hit with the memories of committing murder in numbers that you'd expect to find in a war, often stalking and tormenting my victims just to draw out their agony more and get a greater thrill out of it... and I had to remember how much I'd _liked_ it."

* * *

  
Even as Booth told his impossible story in such a matter-of-fact manner, Brennan wished that she could find a way to contradict anything that he was saying or dismiss it as nothing but an insane delusion, but she couldn't.

Her knowledge of body language was far from perfect, but she knew Booth almost as well as she knew bones, and while he could _conceal_ the truth from her if he wanted, she also knew when he was being utterly honest with her about something, and right now he was giving every impression of telling the truth.

God... if he was telling the truth, her partner was older than the _country_...

"I tried to be what Darla expected at first- over a century of habit doesn't go away just because you don't like living that way any more-, but I had to leave her during the Boxer Rebellion because I couldn't bring myself to kill innocents any more," Booth continued, his eyes constantly shifting around the room as though he couldn't bring himself to focus on one particular part of it over the rest (As much as she couldn't believe what Booth was telling her, Brennan had to admit that the last bit of information made sense; traditions and habits were hard to remove from a society even after they stopped being relevant, and personal habits that deeply ingrained would only be harder to shake off). "After that, I spent a century or so wandering around the planet, not really doing much of anything- I helped stop a vampire cult in the trenches in the First World War and was roped into recovering a submarine that had been stuck at the bottom of the ocean in the Second, but otherwise I pretty much stayed out of it-, until..."

He paused for a moment, a wistful smile on his face for the first time since he'd started talking. "Until I met... her."

"Oh, there's a girl involved?" Hodgins asked (Brennan wished that she understood why she should feel jealous at this new information; she'd always known that Booth had exes out there, and it had _never_ concerned her).

* * *

  
"Buffy Summers," Booth confirmed, eyes narrowing slightly as Hodgins restrained a slight laugh at the name before he continued. "She was the latest Vampire Slayer- mystical warriors chosen to battle vampires; when one dies, the other is Called, and is granted all the strength and speed needed to combat vampires without any of their weaknesses-, and certain... individuals... thought that I was the best person to help her learn about her new calling. I got back into shape and started helping her out a few times, but things got more complicated when..."

"When you fell in love with her, huh?" Angela finished for him, smiling slightly at her. "And, lemme guess, she fell for you as well?"

"Hold on; you were a _vampire_ , and you fell for the girl who's destined to kill your species?" Hodgins said, looking at Booth in surprise. "That's-"

"Ironic?" Booth finished for him, smiling grimly at the entomologist. "Yeah, more than one person commented on the irony, but she accepted my past, I helped her deal with the pressure of her Slaying duties, and we were generally happy... until I found out there was a clause in my curse."

"A clause?" Cam repeated in confusion.

"The Romanii cursed me so that I would suffer," Booth explained, clenching and unclenching his fists at the memory of the first time he'd re-lost his soul. "As a result, they included a clause- a stupid, idiotic, _pointless_ clause- that, if I should experience a moment of perfect happiness, a moment when that soul _wasn't_ tormenting me with its existence... I would lose that soul."

"Huh?" Cam said, her confusion having only increased with Booth's latest revelation. "They wanted to _punish_... demon-you... but also gave the demon a chance to _get out_? How does _that_ make sense?"

"Never really got around to asking them about it," Booth said simply, before he swiftly moved on to the story; the less he had to reveal about _this_ point in his life, the better (Even after so long, the memory of how his relationship with Buffy had failed was far from a happy one). "Anyway, Buffy's friends were eventually able to restore my soul, but with the clause still intact, and the... potential... for it to be triggered again, I broke up with Buffy and relocated to Los Angeles, where I started up a private detective agency specialising in the supernatural cases where people couldn't ask for help from the normal law enforcement agencies... and also earned the enmity of law firm Wolfram & Hart."

"Wolfram & Hart?" Hodgins said, looking at Booth in surprise. "I've heard about those guys; they represent some of the richest creeps in the world-"

"And are basically the law firm Johnny Cochrane's too ethical to join, right?" Booth finished, nodding in confirmation at Hodgins before he continued. "And as if _that_ wasn't bad enough, they're also essentially sponsored by a group of demons known only as the 'Senior Partners', out to further such goals as man's inhumanity to man and arrange for the apocalypse."

"The apocalypse?" Bones repeated, looking at him in shock, her hands held up in a 'stop' gesture that Booth was willing to bet she didn't know she was making; he must be hitting her with so much new information that she was trying to get him to take a break so that her mind could catch up. "A law firm was preparing for the _apocalypse_?"

"Along with various other schemes in between now and then involving raising various demons, eliminating champions or seers who might play important roles in the final battle, and things like that," Angel explained. "We played a cat-and-mouse game for four years or so- they tried to drive me mad or evil, I dismantled some of their schemes to do so..."

He shrugged slightly. "Then, of course, I thwarted world peace by destroying a higher power that would have erased war at the cost of eating a dozen or so people a day and rendering us incapable of doing anything other than worship her all the time, and the Senior Partners decided to give me complete control of the rebuilt branch after it was destroyed."

"You were in charge of a law firm?" Angela said with a smile. "Guess that explains your old 'thing' for lawyers-"

"The closest I ever came to doing _anything_ like that with anyone at Wolfram & Hart was when some old man switched bodies with me and made out with Lilah Morgan- she was basically one of my main adversaries in the firm-, and I think we can all agree that doesn't count," Booth interjected, shaking his head pointedly at Angela before he continued. "Anyway, I remained in charge of the firm for about a year- tried to shut down some of their more questionable activities, such as a department that provided necromancers with body parts or instilling a 'no human blood' policy for the other vampire employees, while still keeping some of the other clients satisfied and safe with our services so that we didn't lose the power we'd need to _really_ make a difference-, until I managed to figure out where to hit."

"Where to hit?" Cam asked.

"Hold on; you mean you figured out who's _really_ behind everything?" Hodgins asked, looking at Booth with a sudden wide grin at this sudden vindication of all his old conspiracy theories.

"The Circle of the Black Thorn," Booth replied, nodding in confirmation at Hodgins. "Various demons and particularly evil humans were allowed into the Circle for the power and authority it gave them to serve the Senior Partners directly; I had to pretend to have been corrupted by the power the Partners had offered me as branch head in order to get in, but once I was in, I and my team took down the entire Circle the following night."

"Take them out to stop them bad guys, huh?" Angela asked with a smile.

"More like tossing sand into the machine to slow it down for a bit, but basically, yeah," Booth said, shrugging slightly as he took in the surprised expressions of his friends at his apparent nonchalance. "Look, I knew going in that the Partners would just set up a new Circle eventually; my _goal_ in destroying the Circle was to show them that they couldn't control _everything_ no matter how powerful they were..."

Looking down at himself, the Jeffersonian staff were surprised to see Booth smile slightly as he raised his hands in front of him, flexing his fingers as he spoke. "Of course, I _definitely_ didn't anticipate that I'd end up fulfilling the Shanshu Prophecy when I did it..."

"The what?" Bones asked.

"The Shanshu Prophecy," Booth replied. "It was an old prophecy that stated that the vampire with a soul would 'shanshu' as a reward after achieving his destiny; typically 'shanshu' meant 'die', but since I was already physically dead as a vampire, in my case it meant that I would become human and die a mortal death. There was some ambiguity about what my destiny actually _was_ \- I was just meant to play a role in the apocalypse without anyone specifying what side I was on or anything like that-, but, apparently, my role in taking down the Circle caused such a significant setback to the Senior Partners' plans for this dimension that- after a few... complications were straightened out-, I ended up human."

For a moment, the Jeffersonian staff could only stare at Booth as he looked back at them- the agent could almost _see_ their minds trying to put everything he'd just told them into a rational, scientific context and dismissing all the reasons why he would have told them such a story if it hadn't been the truth just as quickly- until Angela finally spoke.

"So... you became human because of some... higher powers?" she asked at last.

"New name and background included at no extra charge, I might add," Booth said, nodding in confirmation at Angela. "Everything in my career in the bureau really happened, as did most of my army training, but my childhood?"

He shrugged slightly, trying to sound more casual than he was (He knew that there was no way to make this sound good- particularly not for Cam, who'd 'actually' known him back then-; he couldn't even use the Scoobies' reactions to the truth about Dawn as Dawn had always _thought_ she knew what she was whereas he'd definitely been lying to them) before he continued. "Pretty much anyone you met from back then didn't _really_ meet me; they just had Seeley Booth... inserted into their memories."

Noting Bones's sceptical expression, Booth looked over at her, already guessing what was on her mind. "That's part of the reason what happened back then... wasn't that positive; it stops me having to lie too much about my past by giving me a 'fake' past I wouldn't _want_ to discuss if it was real."

"O-kaaay..." Hodgins said after a moment's silence, shaking his head slightly as he looked at Booth. "I can _kind_ of follow why you'd not want to tell us that- assuming it's all true-, but even if it is... where does Angelus- assuming it _is_ Angelus- fit into all this?"

* * *

  
"I've got a couple of ideas on that front," Booth said, stepping back and raising his head as though he was addressing somebody above him. "And on that topic, where the _hell_ are you hiding now, you goddamn chatty piece of _crap_?"

"Uh... what?" Angela asked, looking anxiously at Brennan; clearly, Brennan wasn't the only one wondering if Booth had gone mad based on his sudden apparent change of topic.

"There's only one thing on the planet with the power and potential ability to bring Angelus back after I became human," Booth said, his arms slightly spread as he studied the office in a circular pattern, clearly looking for something. "The damn thing tried to drive me to kill Buffy or kill myself at one point back in the day, and then it staged a mass attack on Buffy's group after I moved to Los Angeles and hasn't been heard from since, but if it _isn't_ behind this, I'll eat my sword... so show your goddamn face, you intangible _bastard_!"

"That's really only accurate approximately fifty percent of the time, Seeley," a voice said from behind the Jeffersonian staff.

Brennan's blood ran cold.

 _No_...

It was _impossible_ ; she'd identified those remains _personally_...

Then she turned around, and there she was, dressed in a dark blue top and blue jeans with her familiar dolphin belt-buckle, long brown hair hanging down around her head as she smiled at the other people in the room.

"M... Mom?" Brennan whispered.

"Hold on; _Mom_?" Angela said, looking between Brennan and the new arrival in shock. "Bren-"

"That's not your mother, Bones," Booth said, moving to stand between the squints and 'Christine', his tone brokering no arguments as he resolutely folded his arms to stare at the woman opposite them. "It's the First."

"Correct," Christine said, nodding at him in smug confirmation. "I'm back... and I'm _definitely_ in the mood for a few choice words or two."


	10. The Truth Behind the Tumour

"The First...?" Hodgins repeated in confusion, looking uncertainly between Booth and Christine. "Sorry, I think I missed something here; this is the first... what, exactly?"

"The First Evil," Booth clarified.

"As in an ancient evil being-?" Cam asked hopefully.

"As in the being who essentially _created_ the concept of evil back when Man first decided to bash in his neighbour's head for the other guy's bigger bit of mango," Booth interjected, quickly dashing Cam's brief hopes even as his gaze remained fixed on the casually smiling form in front of them. "It doesn't have its own body, so it manifests as the deceased instead, but its real weakness is the fact that it can't _touch_ anything..."

A thought seemed to occur to him at this point as he turned his attention back to the creature in front of him, smiling in a slightly teasing manner at his foe. "On that topic, wasn't part of your last plan to throw off the good/evil scale so that you could become corporeal, or did I get my facts crossed?"

"You're... basically right in that regard," Christine- even knowing what it really was, Brennan couldn't think of this new arrival as anything other than the woman it looked like- said, before it turned to face Brennan with an almost teasing smile on its face. "Of course, that doesn't mean I don't _know_ what your mother was thinking in her life, Temperance- or should I call you Joy?"

"What-?" Brennan began.

"I have _always_ been here, 'Doctor Brennan'; do you really think that you can have _any_ secrets from the embodiment of a fundamental concept of the universe itself?" Christine asked, rolling her eyes in that teasing manner that Brennan still remembered from when she'd been a child and her mother had laughed at an unexpected question she'd asked out of nowhere. "And on that topic, didn't you ever wonder why I insisted that we leave?"

"What-?" Brennan tried to say again.

"Back when your father and I left you all those years ago," Christine continued, projecting such a commanding presence that it somehow quietened any attempt Booth might have made to try and interrupt. "He wanted to take you along, but I said no; you never wondered why?"

"You wanted us to be safe-" Brennan started to answer.

"You were cramping my style," Christine interjected, rolling her eyes in frustration. "God, everything we did had to come back to _you_ back then; we'd stuck around somewhere to give you two some sense of stability, and then we'd had to live the dull, traditional, _boring_ life just because we had to think-"

"Shut. UP," Booth said, stepping forward to stand between Brennan and the thing that wore her mother's face, his stare a cold, intense one that none of the Jeffersonian staff felt entirely comfortable with.

"Oh, really?" Christine asked, looking at him with a smirk. "Would you rather I looked like... this?"

With that, the figure blurred and transformed into a tall man, approximately Booth's height but slightly thinner, with a few days' worth of stubble on his chin, dressed in a brown leather jacket and a dark shirt and trousers.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" the new figure said, smirking as he looked at Booth. "Seeing the face of the man who gained a purpose and a lover, only to lose his love and his life because of _you_?"

"Wes knew the risks when he went after Cyvus-" Booth countered.

"You knew I didn't really have a hope; you sent me there because you were tired-" the First began.

"Because I knew Wes was the only person with any _real_ chance of getting past his defences; we _all_ knew that the odds of us walking away from the Circle were low, but that didn't mean we should give up," Booth countered, his gaze grim as he stared at the man before him. "I'll make this simple; take your intangible ass out of here, _now_ , or I swear to God that I'm going to track down your Bringers and _really_ make them hurt..."

"Now, why should I do that, when Angelus is making _such_ an impact on everyone?" the First asked, shifting to look like a blonde woman in a black top with her arms folded. "After all, he always makes things _so_ much more interesting; add in the fact that, since nobody _knows_ what you are, nobody thinks that Special Agent Seeley Booth is _ever_ going to do anything like that..."

"I've had enough interesting experiences in my life without needing any more added in," Booth countered, his expression grim before a slight smirk crossed his face. "And what's with the downgrade since last time you showed your borrowed faces around here; the last time I heard anything from you was when you were trying to kill the Potentials-"

"The who?" Angela asked.

"I mentioned how the Slayer thing works, right; one dies, the next is Called, and all that?" Booth asked, waiting for Angela to nod in confirmation before he continued. "What I didn't mention at the time is that there are always at least dozens, if not hundreds, of girls active around the world who at least had the _potential_ to become the next Slayer- they were generally tracked down and trained by the Watcher's Council, although a few potentials like Buffy slipped through the cracks and became the Slayer by sheer chance-, but a few years ago, about a year before I got my humanity, the First took advantage of... a recent mystical imbalance... to send its forces out to kill all the Potentials."

"What kind of imbalance-?" Hodgins asked.

"It's a complicated thing that even I don't get and I don't have the resources to explain to you in full detail," Booth interjected, waving Hodgins' queries aside as he turned his attention back to the First. "The point is, you screwed up _that_ particular attempted attack and ended up with nothing to show for it but a destroyed Hellmouth; why are you focusing on _me_ now?"

"Well, I have to do _something_ to keep myself occupied while I wait for my original power to replenish itself," the First said with a casual shrug. "You might not be a Champion any more, but you had your fingers in enough metaphorical pies to make an interesting impact on the world even if you're now 'dead'; if I'm able to actually confirm what happened to you _and_ bring back your demon at the same time..."

The manifestation shrugged before it shimmered again, this time transforming into a pale-skinned, bald figure dressed in what looked like black leather, with a twisted, slightly bat-like face and long fingernails.

"Well," the figure said, grinning maliciously at Booth, "it's a good way to build my reputation back up after the damage your little girlfriend did to my followers."

"If you think that's going to intimidate me, it's not going to work," Booth countered with a profound stare. "He didn't impress me when he was real and I was still old enough not to have died of old age, and it's _not_ going to impress me when I know you can't actually _do_ anything to me like that."

"Oh, I know he doesn't scare you," the First said, flexing its fingers as it grinned at him. "But I felt that the implications of this form were more... interesting... than it would be if I just stuck with your girlfriend's appearance-"

"Buffy defeated you twice already; you could at least do her the dignity of referring to her by _name_ ," Booth retorted, before he stopped himself with a slight smirk. "Oh, right, I forgot; you don't respect _anybody_ because we're all 'inferior' to you... up to the point where you get your intangible ass kicked, of course."

"Uh... hold on, this thing can look like your ex?" Angela asked, looking awkwardly at Booth. "I thought that you said it could only look like the dead..."

"Buffy died for a few minutes a few years back before a friend of hers revived her with CPR," Booth clarified, before he shook his head in frustration and focused his attention back on the matter at hand. "Look, that's not important; what's _really_ important right now is how the _Hell_ you brought Angelus back? He _died_ when I became human; how could you bring him back?"

"Oh, it wasn't easy, I assure you," the First replied, a casual confidence in his tone as he addressed his foe. "Even if I was at my full power, resurrecting a vampire of Angelus's power and age wouldn't be an easy task even if I was operating at full strength... or, at least, it would have been, if I didn't have access to a sample of his physical being still in _this_ plane of existence."

Booth's eyes widened in horror.

" _Me_..." he whispered.

"You always were smarter than people gave you credit for," the First smirked. "Once I tracked you down- it was a long shot that you had actually survived to Shanshu after that mess, of course, but in the state I was left in I had nothing but time on my hands to find out what the case was either way-, I was able to trigger the necessary circumstances for Angelus to manifest; I had to take a cue from a certain writer and make him the Stark to your Beaumont at first out of a lack of other ideas, but-"

"Hold on; _Stark_?" Booth repeated, holding up a hand as he glared at the first. "As in, _George_ Stark? From _The Dark Half_?"

"Correct," the First replied, smirking around its twisted reddened mouth. "I admit that I am slightly depressed I wasn't able to come up with the idea myself, but Mr King's works are so intriguing-"

"Uh... I don't know what that means..." Brennan said, slightly uncomfortably raising a hand to draw attention to herself as she looked awkwardly between the two speakers.

"Long story short, _The Dark Half_ features a writer named Thad Beaumont whose penname George Stark manifests as an independent entity after he metaphorically killed the guy off because he wanted to focus on his own work," Booth explained, his expression becoming grimmer as he looked back at the First, while had now transformed into a man with long brown hair dressed in a suit with an artificial hand. "Let me guess; you got the idea for taking Angelus out by using the method that was used in that book to remove Stark from Beaumont?"

"Huh?" Cam said, looking in confusion at Booth, trying to focus on something that at least seemed to be more down-to-earth than the main argument going on right now. "Sorry, what are you talking about?"

"Stark started off as Beaumont's unborn twin brother, but he was apparently absorbed by his brother while they were in the womb; people only found out he'd existed when what was assumed to be a brain tumour that Beaumont suffered from when he was eleven turned out to be the manifesting remnants of his twin," Booth explained, never taking his eyes off the First as he continued. "That's why he knows about these guys, isn't it? You took my memories from _my mind_ and _gave them_ to Angelus..."

"Well, the tumour _was_ the manifestation of what remains of Angelus in your psyche; I just gave your body a reason to reject it," the First explained casually. "Add in the memories that the remnant had absorbed while it was hanging around in your subconscious, and it was really child's play-"

"Hold on; you're saying that... _you_ were responsible for Booth's tumour?" Hodgins said, looking incredulously at the creature before them as it shimmered again and transformed into a woman in her late twenties with shoulder-length dark hair dressed in a white knitted sweater and a long skirt.

"Well, it was one of my remaining servants who did that- a very complicated bit of magic, really; quite a few spells had to be modified for it to work that way-, but essentially your assessment is correct, Doctor Hodgins," the First said, nodding at the entomologist before looking back at Booth with a smile. "How does it feel to know that your demon just got tougher?"

"Nothing I can't handle," Booth countered, only to take a slight step back as the creature changed again, this time appearing as a blond woman slightly shorter than Angel, dressed in a long red dress.

"Oh, but he _is_ more than you can handle, my boy," the First said, its tone actually sounding seductive as it walked towards Booth, one hand reaching up as though to touch his face despite its lack of a body that it could use to do anything of the sort. "You were the most terrifying vampire in all of Europe for over a century when all you knew how to do was kill using the skills of a vampire... but when you add in all the modern skills you've learned as a _human_..."

"Yeah, not _really_ that effective, you intangible bastard," Booth said, stepping back slightly to stop the First's intangible hand from reaching his cheek; even if it couldn't touch him, Booth had no interest in getting closer to the First than he had to. "Most of my military training relies on daylight to see by- night-vision's good, but it won't make up for _everything_ he'd be missing, and he doesn't have any means of getting night-vision equipment since even I don't know where you'd buy that and he can't just walk into the bureau to get it since I've changed my passwords since he and I 'split'-, and since I doubt you've recreated the Gem of Amara in your spare time, he's got more than a _few_ problems right now...

"Oh, I don't deny that those skills won't make up the difference completely, but sometimes it's not just what you know; it's _who_ you know," the First said.

Before anyone could ask it to explain that particular comment in more detail, the First blurred and vanished from view, leaving the group looking apprehensively at each other.

"Am I the only one feeling worried about how that went?" Cam asked, looking back at Booth.

"Trust me; you should be," Booth said, nodding grimly back at Cam as he pulled out his cellphone and turned it back on, the rest of the group doing the same on his cue. "The only time the First doesn't just keep talking to you when it's started is when it _wants_ to leave, which means that we're almost certainly going to be dealing with some _serious_ crap in the not-too-distant future that it's going to unleash on us sooner rather than later..."

Brennan's thoughts on that particular bit of insight were never to be revealed as her phone rang just as she turned it on, prompting her to automatically answer it.

"Doctor Brennan," she said, putting the phone to her ear.

" _Doctor Brennan_ ," Deputy Director Cullen's voice said from the other end, sounding notably frustrated at something, " _I've been trying to reach you for the last half-hour; what happened_?"

"I was at a lecture and I had my phone turned off," Brennan said, her mind instantly seizing on that as her new explanation for her recent actions; it wasn't even really a lie, given that Booth had given them a basic lecture about his past, even if it wasn't something that would normally be covered in a lecture. "What's the problem?"

" _Doctor Sweets never made it into work today_ ," Cullen replied. " _Given how closely he works with your team, I thought I'd check to see if he'd just popped in to give you the latest news on his most recent profile or something like that, but if you haven't seen him_ -"

"I haven't," Brennan said, realising that she had to terminate this conversation as quickly as possible if her worst theory about what she'd just heard was accurate. "I'll just... ask around, and I'll get back to you if he left a message with somebody else here."

It was an abrupt way to end the conversation, but she had more immediate concerns right now than any possible offence that she might have caused; if she was right, and Booth hadn't exaggerated about how bad he'd been back then, right now every minute could count...

"What's wrong?" Booth asked, looking at her with an uncertainty that she didn't like; even when he was confused at her scientific terminology, Booth had never given the impression that he didn't know what he was doing.

"Sweets never showed up at the Bureau this morning," Brennan replied, focusing on the most obvious detail of the recent call. "It might not be anything-"

"Except that it definitely _is_ something," Booth finished for her, resolution back in his attitude as he nodded grimly at her.

"Huh?" Angela asked, looking at him uncertainly. "Booth, I get that things are bad, but there's no reason to think that _everything_ weird that happens now is... well, is _you_ -"

"Except that Sweets is the _only_ person I work with regularly who still doesn't know about Angelus or the supernatural; if Angelus _was_ after anyone..." Booth began, before he trailed off as he looked up for a moment, apparently thinking about something else, before he snapped his fingers in inspiration. "Of course... he's lost his _old_ edge, so he's giving himself a _new_ one..."

"His 'old edge'?" Angela repeated. "What does that mean?"

"Back when I lost my soul, the main advantage Angelus had in dealing with everyone is that nobody really wanted to _kill_ him because they'd be killing me too," Booth explained. "He can't take advantage of _that_ now- and it was generally of mixed use back then anyway; once you know what you're doing there are a few ways to take out vampires without killing them-, so he's trying to get a new edge by abducting people so that I _can't_ kill him if I find him..."

His voice faltered as his expression changed to one of horror, looking over at Brennan just as she came to the same realisation.

" _Parker_ ," they both said simultaneously.

"Hold on; the vampire you would threaten a _kid_?" Hodgins said, looking incredulously at Booth. "You're not _that_ kinda guy-"

"Angelus once killed three little girls and laid them out in bed so that their father only realised they were dead when he kissed them goodnight and noticed that they were unusually cold," Booth interjected grimly. "Trust me; he's that kind of guy."

He paused for a moment, clearly lost in dark memories that he would give anything not to possess, before he shook his head and looked back at the Jeffersonian staff. "You guys get to Sweets's place and see if you can find anything that might indicate where Angelus took him- he wouldn't do this kind of thing without giving us a chance; with this kind of game, he has to feel like he's giving us a shot or it wouldn't be any fun-; I'll make sure Rebecca and Parker are somewhere safe."

As he turned and walked out of the room, Brennan thought she heard him mutter something about Sweets's ignorance being another advantage, but decided that it wasn't worth asking about even if Booth had meant what she thought he'd meant.

Sweets would _never_ believe that Angelus was actually Booth...

Would he?

Even as she prepared to head to Sweets's apartment to look for the evidence that Booth seemed certain Angelus would have left, Brennan could only hope that their resident psychologist's insight didn't fail him when faced with something as disturbing as Angelus...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next, Sweets comes face-to-face with Angelus, who is going to use the fact that Sweets doesn't know he exists to do _exactly_ what Booth and Brennan thought he wouldn't be able to pull off; make Sweets think that he's a Booth who's gone psychopathically insane...


	11. The Evaluation of a Psychopath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To eliminate any possibility of confusion, I'll clarify this now; for the duration of this chapter, the 'Agent Booth' that Sweets is with is actually Angelus, who is using a suit to pose as Booth; he's decided to put his usual egotistical desire for his targets to _know_ who's doing this to them to one side so that he can focus more on the pleasure of seeing Sweets lose faith in Booth

As Lance Sweets blinked his way back into consciousness, he wondered what had actually just happened to him; the last thing he remembered was leaving his apartment to head to work when something had hit him on the back of his head just as he was locking his door, and now...

Looking around himself, Sweets couldn't help but swallow apprehensively; even without the fact that he was trapped in the chair that he was currently sitting in by thick ropes wrapped around his upper body and arms- along with thinner ropes around his ankles and the chair's front legs, as well as similar bonds around his arms and the chair's arm rests-, his current location did not lend itself to a relaxing environment.

He didn't know where this place was, but judging by the condition that the walls around him were in, he doubted that it was somewhere that was used regularly, and the size suggested an old warehouse of some kind. He could just about make out a faint glow around a few panels on the walls that covered what he presumed were the windows, which at least suggested that it was daylight- he'd left in the early hours of the morning before the sun came up; he'd had a couple of case files he'd wanted to go over before his first appointment-, but apart from that...

"Oh, you're awake," a voice said, prompting Sweets to look up in surprise at the speaker's location. "I have to admit, I was starting to worry I'd hit you too hard."

"Agent Booth...?" Sweets said, looking in surprise at the man sitting casually opposite him, dressed in a suit as he sat on a simple fold-out metal chair in front of Sweets, the two men surrounded by various piles of boxes apart from a gap behind Booth, the agent's arms folded and legs crossed as though there was nothing unusual about this situation. "What are-"

"What am I doing here?" Booth finished for him, shrugging slightly as he smirked at Sweets. "Good question, if a bit of a poor one given your alleged intellect; when two people are in a place like this, me walking about like this while you're stuck to a chair like _that_ , I think it's safe to say that the obvious explanation for the current situation is probably the correct one, wouldn't you?"

"What...?" Sweets began, before he stopped to consider Booth's sentence, his mind not liking the implications of Booth's statement one bit.

The obvious assumption was that Booth was free because he was _responsible_ for Sweets's current condition... but that was _impossible_... right?

"C'mon, Sweets, I didn't hit you _that_ hard, and I really went to a lot of effort to make sure you didn't get jolted about too much in the car; you're seriously expecting me to believe I did _that_ much brain damage?" Booth asked, rolling his eyes as he smirked at Sweets in a manner that somehow gave Sweets the impression that Booth was about to go for his neck.

"Sorry; you're... _you_ did this?" Sweets asked, trying to indicate the warehouse around him even when limited to simply rotating his wrists in a basic circle. "But... _why_?"

"I felt like it," Booth replied, shrugging slightly as he looked back at Sweets with a grim stare. "I've gone along with the game for the last few years... but right now, I've decided that it's not an issue any more; I'm interested in doing what _I'm_ keen on, rather than what _society_ asks me to do."

"Agent Booth," Sweets said, looking urgently at the man standing over him- he wasn't sure how this had happened, but he _did_ know that he had to talk his friend down before he did something that he'd regret later; all he needed was a chance to talk with Booth and he'd get past this breakdown-, "you don't want to do this; this isn't _you_ -"

"Oh, on the contrary, _Doctor Candy_ ," Booth replied, smirking at him in a disturbing manner that did very little to make Sweets feel comfortable even without the disturbing new 'nickname', "this _is_ me; it's just a me who hasn't been let out of the box for a while."

As Booth stared at him, Sweets couldn't help but shudder at the expression in Booth's eyes.

It wasn't like he'd ever spent that much time staring in Booth's eyes- that was more Doctor Brennan's thing, even if she wouldn't admit how often she did it-, but the sheer emptiness that was in them now was _not_ something he normally saw on those occasions when he did look.

What had _happened_ to him...?

* * *

  
As he stood in front of Rebecca's house, trying not to think about the fact that Angela was still sitting out in the car- if Angelus was back in action, he needed someone available to provide him with an alibi so he didn't get arrested in his demon's place-, Booth wished that he knew how she would react to what he was about to tell her. Back when he'd started dating Rebecca, he'd actually been grateful that she'd never be able to understand what he'd been like in his past because it meant that he'd never be tempted to tell her about Angelus- he'd wanted to leave as much of that part of his past behind him as he could-, but he'd never stopped to think about what it would have been like if he _had_ to tell her the truth...

But, even if he didn't like it, the fact was that he didn't have a choice; with the squints now aware of what he'd been, Angelus had lost the opportunity to use his new main 'weapon' against them by pretending to be him while he was torturing them, which meant that Parker was almost certainly the most likely target, particularly if he was right about Angelus having abducted Sweets.

He just hoped that the others could find some kind of clue at the abduction site about where Angelus had taken the psychiatrist before things went too far; as far as Angelus was concerned, it had been far too long since he'd killed someone close to his humanity, but that just meant that he'd take the opportunity to enjoy the experience rather than guaranteeing that he wouldn't do it...

"Seeley?" Rebecca said- Booth was almost surprised that he'd made his way to the door while he was lost in his thoughts, but this definitely wasn't the time to think about that kind of thing-, looking at him with a confused yet pointed stare. "What are you doing here; if this is about your next weekend-?"

"Look, it's a long story; right now, all that matters is that you and Parker need to leave town for the next few days and get somewhere safe _soon_ ," Booth said, looking urgently at her.

"Hold on; you want me to _what_?" Rebecca said, looking back at him in confused indignation. "I can't just-"

"I know it's short notice, but this isn't normal circumstances; you and Parker are going to be in _serious_ danger-" Booth began.

"OK, now we're in _danger_?" Rebecca repeated, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked at him, confusion being swiftly replaced by obvious hostility. "Seeley, what _is_ this all about?"

For a moment, Booth thought about trying to misdirect her question- she could sometimes threaten to take away his visitation rights when he just wanted Parker for a different day to the previously-arranged schedule; how was she going to cope with the news that they were being targeted by a homicidal maniac simply because of their connection to _him_?-, but he pushed that thought aside; whatever his concerns about his future relationship with Parker, his son's safety had to be his first priority.

"In a nutshell?" he said, looking grimly at the woman who was the mother of his child. "Some guy I put away some years ago just got out, he's after me, and... well, he's basically my evil twin."

Rebecca blinked.

"What?" she said, looking incredulously back at him, clearly unable to believe what she'd just heard (Not that Booth could blame her; even the most plausible non-supernatural improvised explanations for Angelus's existence were a bit of a stretch, no matter how much the squints had tried to help him think of something that could work). "You have an... 'evil twin'?"

"It's too complicated to explain right now, but the essential details include the fact that this guy's so obsessed with destroying me that he's... long story short, he used a few contacts he's acquired over the years to make himself look like me," Booth explained, hoping that the basic cover story would work; he didn't want to have to lie _too_ much about this whole mess, but at the same time he couldn't tell her the truth about Angelus's vampiric origins.

"You mean... he... had plastic surgery, or... something?" Rebecca asked, looking uncertainly at Booth, evidently trying to work out what he wasn't telling her.

"That's... pretty much it, yeah," Booth said; he could honestly say that Angelus had undergone _some_ 'work' by others in order to get into his current shape, given that recreating his entire body could probably count as _some_ kind of plastic surgery even if it wasn't the most conventional kind. "Look, the point is that he likes to take his victims out up close with his bare hands, so you need to get away from here for a few days so that he can't get at you; head somewhere that I either don't know about or don't think you'd go to, don't tell me _where_ you're going, and if I have to call you..."

He paused for a moment, trying to think of an appropriate word for what he was about to propose, until it came to him. "If I call you, the first word I'll say to you is 'Katherine'; if I don't say that before I say anything else, then it's not me."

"His... his _voice_ sounds like yours?" Rebecca said, blinking at him in obvious confusion; Booth wasn't sure if she just thought he was crazy or if she was panicking at the thought that there was someone out there _that_ obsessed with killing him, but either way the important thing was that she was taking his warnings somewhat seriously.

"He's had a lot of practise," Booth said with a slight shrug, waving that issue aside as he continued to look intently at her, hoping that intensity would make up for his inability to provide her with the whole truth. "Look, the important thing is that you _have_ to get Parker out of here before he gets here himself; it's too dangerous for him to stay here while this guy's on the loose."

"And how long will that take?" Rebecca asked, regaining her composure to a point as she looked more intently at him. "Seeley, I can't just uproot my life every time some psycho-"

"Angelus is a special case; trust me, once he's out of the picture, that's it for psychos on his scale trying to get to me," Booth said, resisting the urge to cross his fingers at that comment; if the First could send Angelus after him, it wasn't totally impossible for him to send others, but most of the people who'd be that interested in Angel's death were already dead and he doubted that the First had the means to _completely_ bring someone back to life on its own given the lengths it had needed to resurrect Angelus. "All I'm asking is for you to get out of Washington for the next few days until I've dealt with him; I'll contact your office and let them know where you are."

It wasn't a perfect promise, but it was all that he could do right now.

Right now, his priority had to be ensuring Parker and Rebecca's safety before the demon he'd lived with for over a century went after somebody _else_ he cared about; he'd start worrying about the finer details once he was sure that he'd have the time to do so...

* * *

  
"A... Agent Booth?" Sweets asked, swallowing slightly as he looked apprehensively at the man before him. "Wh... what are you... _why_ are-?"

"Why am I doing this?" Booth asked, shrugging as he smiled dismissively at Sweets before he narrowed his eyes in a very pointed stare. "Among other things, I felt that you'd made a point with all your talk about the 'zone of truth', and realised that I had to be honest with you about something; you _suck_ at your job."

Sweets could only stare in shock at Booth's statement; after his last meeting with Gordon Wyatt, he thought that he'd established that Booth did respect his opinion despite his own fears to the contrary, and now here Booth was, telling him that he _wasn't_ good at his job?

"Uh... what are you talking about?" he asked.

"Well, among other things, your habit of poking your nose into other peoples' businesses can get _really_ annoying," Booth clarified. "I mean, Bones and I let you stick around to work on your little 'book' because you said you'd provide us with insight into killers that we were trying to track, and then you go and start going _really_ outside your original, _personally-defined_ boundaries by poking your nose into our private lives _outside_ the cases?"

"I have a responsibility as a member of the team to analyse and identify anything that could compromise our effectiveness as a unit-" Sweets began.

"Yeah, that'd be a great speech, if it wasn't for the fact that you don't even seem to _care_ about the fact that you're responsible for about half the personal issues you 'draw to our attention'," Booth asked, raising a pointed eyebrow as he glared at Sweets. "I'd call that a _pretty_ big problem, Doc; wouldn't you?"

The younger man could only blink in confusion at that statement.

"What?" he asked, looking uncertainly at Booth.

"Your role in Ange and Jack breaking up, for one thing," Booth said, with a tone of voice that suggested he was amazed Sweets hadn't realised what he was being told himself. "They were both _perfectly_ happy after Grayson agreed to that divorce, and they only broke off their wedding because _you_ convinced Cam to tell them that she'd slept with Angela's ex; that kind of news is just _automatically_ going to make Hodgins feel a bit uncomfortable about his own manhood even if he _wasn't_ a bit of a weed."

"I felt that clearing the air about Cam's actions would be good for their relationship-" Sweets began (He didn't want to think about Booth's blunt dismissal of Hodgins's capabilities; he was just acting out after the stress of his imagined feelings for Doctor Brennan by trying to disregard anything close to her as being important to him, but as disappointing as it was, it wasn't anything _dangerous_ , and he'd recognise that as soon as he'd had some time to think things over...).

"Yeah, _you_ thought; everything's based around what _you_ think they should do and heaven help that anyone else is capable of forming an opinion without you, isn't it?" Booth practically spat, leaning over so that he was practically nose-to-nose with Sweets for a moment until he leant back and stood up, walking around behind the chair to lean over as he continued to glare at Sweets. "And don't even get me _started_ on your little fucking 'experiment' with my 'death'; you're goddamn lucky that Doctor Brennan didn't go and get the psychiatric commission to revoke your licence after _that_ stunt."

"It was a legitimate-" Sweets tried to say.

"Pretty sure there's something in your oath about not causing undue mental and psychological damage to your patients, but given that you've screwed that up at least twice that I can think of I'm just going to have to mark you down as incompetent and wonder how you got your goddamn job in the first place," Booth said, shaking his head in disgust.

"What do you-?" Sweets began.

"Do you _really_ think Bones was so unfeeling she didn't care at _all_ about what happened to me?" Booth asked, looking slightly quizzically at him with a smile that could have almost been considered teasing if it wasn't for the sadistic gleam of pleasure in his eyes. "I mean, granted, I'm going to go and emotionally torture herself myself once I'm done with you, but that's just because I'm a screwed-up guy who gets off on that kind of thing; you're her goddamn _therapist_ and you told her that the first person she'd let herself be _really_ close to since her parents left had gone and _died_ on her."

"You aren't-" Sweets began.

"What; I'm not 'qualified' to make that assessment?" Booth interjected, his expression now a harsh glare as he looked at Sweets. "I've been tracking killers for years before I met you, which allowed me to develop some _pretty_ interesting methods of working out how they thought or might act; contrary to your warped little world view, I _am_ capable of doing stuff without you to provide insight for me."

"Agent Booth," Sweets said, seizing on the possible hook Booth's last statement had given him and hoping he was following his friend's current train of thought correctly, "I understand that you're feeling hostile because you feel that I've been holding you back professionally and personally, but I was only ever trying to help you, and I know enough to know that you're not going to do anything else to me; you aren't-"

"Oh, _now_ you think I'm not a psychopath?" Booth asked, smirking at Sweets once again. "You came up with all those arguments about my relationship with my dad and how my past in the army affected me when you were trying to determine whether I'd killed Pete Carlson, but when you're on the front lines suddenly I can't be something?"

He shrugged. "Get the picture, Doc; what's up right now is the simple fact that you are _really_ wrong about me."

* * *

  
"How are they?" Brennan asked, looking anxiously up at Booth as he and Angela hurried into the side-lab where she, Cam and Hodgins were currently going over some of more anomalous-looking particulates they'd found outside Sweets's apartment building. Fortunately, he'd lived at the end of a corridor in the building, which made it comparatively easy to notice the signs of a struggle in that area

"Rebecca's not happy about it, but she accepted the cover story; she and Parker are on their way out of town now," Booth said, nodding briefly at her before he turned his attention to the rest of the group. "How's things?"

"Making progress, anyway; we'll get back to you when we find something definite," Hodgins said briefly, before he turned to look more directly at Booth. "I still don't get why you needed Angela with you-"

"Because her expertise wouldn't have been relevant in your search and I need someone with me at all times until Angelus is out of the picture to independently vouch for my presence so that people don't start accusing me of doing what he's doing," Booth said, looking pointedly back at Hodgins. "Nobody in law enforcement is going to believe the 'My evil twin did it' argument unless we can provide evidence, and since we can't do that right now, permanent cover story until things are over is my best bet."

"OK," Hodgins said, looking at Booth for a moment before he nodded. "That... makes sense."

"Thanks," Booth said, before he turned to look at the other squints even as they continued going over their latest discoveries. "On the topic of Angelus, there's a few things you need to know to help you determine whether you're looking at me or him; for one thing, Angelus can't enter a house without an invitation-"

"Huh?" Cam asked, looking at him in surprise. "That rule's _real_?"

"Yep; so long as the resident's alive- and human; it doesn't matter when it's a demon-, there's basically a barrier around the house that stops vampires entering the building unless someone who lives there specifically invites them in," Booth confirmed with a nod.

"Anything else we should know about him?" Angela asked.

"Sunlight's the most obvious weakness, but crucifixes and holy water will burn his skin if he makes contact with them; just don't count on them-" Booth continued.

"Hold on; crucifixes?" Bones asked, looking at him uncertainly. "Are you saying... they _do_ hold vampires back?"

"It's what I've always seen used against them, anyway; whether that means other religious items could work, I don't know," Booth said, wishing that he could provide a better answer for Bones's question than that; the _Blade_ movies had provided a more scientifically-based origin for vampires that Bones might have been able to accept, but he couldn't omit the fact that crucifixes and holy water would hurt Angelus and deprive her of a possible weapon against him even to preserve her faith in science.

"Garlic?" Hodgins asked.

"The smell would be rather strong because of his senses, but it wouldn't really hold him back, even if he wasn't as old as he was," Booth said.

"How... strong would he be?" Bones asked, looking curiously at him even if there was still a slight trace of uncertainty in her eyes at the topic that she was discussing.

"No way to be sure, really; the last time someone resurrected a vampire, they started out as a human before they were sired again, but given that I was already here that couldn't have happened-" Booth began.

"You're sure about that?" Angela asked.

"If Angelus came back as a human, he wouldn't have had a soul; I've got that, and I'm pretty sure I didn't experience any spiritual side-effects in the last few months," Booth said, looking grimly back at her before he looked at the others. "The point is, he's probably at about the level I was at before I became human again, which would put him at a point where he could, for example, lift any one of you totally off the ground by the neck without breaking a sweat or punch through any of the doors here without any trouble-"

"Hold on; you said that he couldn't get in-!" Hodgins began.

"He can't get into a private residence without an invitation; the Jeffersonian might be restrict access, but it doesn't count as a personal residence if nobody actually _lives_ here," Booth clarified, indicating the glass doors and the windows around him with a brief wave of his hand. "The place would probably hold out for a few minutes if he really tried to get at you here, but that wouldn't last for long, and there's still a few ways he could probably break in; I'll need to check over the plans later and see what I can find that he might use."

"You break into a lot of places when you were a vampire?" Cam asked.

"A couple of museums, a town hall, a law firm, things like that," Booth said, shrugging slightly before he noticed the expressions on the others' faces. "OK, in my defence, anywhere I broke into when I had my soul was only done to try and recover some kind of dark mystical artefact so that other people couldn't use it; it's not like I did that kind of thing on a whim, and this is _not_ the time to get bogged down in details, OK?"

"Got something!" Hodgins said, smiling as he looked up from the microscope where he was studying some of the particulates, grinning at the rest of the group as he spoke. "It's a particular type of concrete that was used in certain warehouses back in the fifties; only a few buildings like that are still standing-"

"Get me a list of those buildings and focus on anything with sewer access or anything close to Sweets's place," Booth interjected, slamming his hands resolutely on the table as he looked around at his team. "Clock is ticking, people, and we're the only ones with a chance of getting Sweets back while he's breathing; we need to move, and we need to move _now_."

* * *

  
"I... look, I _know_ that I was maybe a bit harsh back then, but I was trying not to let personal experience cloud my judgement; I had to legitimately eliminate you as a suspect-" Sweets tried to protest, even as he became increasingly concerned about his current situation; whatever had caused Agent Booth's recent psychotic break, it was clear that his view on his past had been significantly altered by whatever had taken place.

"You know _nothing_ about what I've done, Sweets," Booth said, glaring at the psychiatrist before a thought seemed to occur to him as he sat down once again. "Actually, would you care to hear a few things about my past that _aren't_ in the official record?"

"Such as...?" Sweets asked, suddenly wondering if his original assessment was wrong; could this 'break' have been something that Booth had been building towards for a long time rather than the sudden 'snap' he'd been assuming it was prior to this?

"Well," Booth said, sitting casually back in his chair as he looked at the psychiatrist, "among other things, I left an entire hotel of people at the mercy of someone that I knew was going to torture and kill them all, I cut a doctor into pieces and buried his body parts just for stalking someone I knew, I locked over two dozen lawyers in a room with two women that I _knew_ were psychotic killers who would and did murder every lawyer in that room simply because I didn't like the lawyers- and I later set those women on fire for the heck of it, I might add-, I killed a man who once described me as his brother because it fitted into a plan I had to do something else, and... what was that other thing?" he said, pausing in thought as he contemplatively tapped his chin for a moment, ignoring Sweets's stunned expression of horror as he looked at him before he snapped his fingers. "Oh yeah; I had another son before Parker, and when he wasn't what I wanted, I killed him."

As much as Sweets didn't want to believe what he'd just heard, the casual manner in which Booth had related everything to him made it clear that the special agent was telling the truth; he had literally done everything that he'd just claimed to have done, and he didn't even seem to _care_...

"But... but _why_ -?" he tried to ask.

"Because that's who I am, Sweets; as you said yourself, I'm a killer," Booth said, shrugging as though they were just discussing the weather before his eyes narrowed. "And it's also why your 'insights' are so rarely actually welcome; I know enough about murderers from past experience to do your 'job' for you."

"But you're not-" Sweets tried to say; he acknowledged that protesting against something like that was probably pointless, but he had to do something to regain control of this increasingly terrifying situation.

"Didn't I _just_ make it clear that I'm not interested in your inaccurate views on the mental state of me or anybody else in this area?" Booth asked, raising an eyebrow as he glared at Sweets. "Seriously, I only even let you in on the cases because I felt kind of sorry for how pathetic you were and I needed someone who could provide an _official_ evaluation of the suspects' mental state; I could do your job in my _sleep_ if I wanted to, but you've got all those letters after your name so people are more inclined to believe that _you_ know what you're talking about, so it's easier to let you do it."

"Uh... pardon?" Sweets asked, suddenly noting something anomalous in Booth's last statements. "If you do... all that... then why do you care about-"

"OK, you know what?" Booth suddenly said, standing up and walking over to a box that was lying on the ground near the two of them, ignoring Sweets's last question as he crouched down to open the box. "We're not really going to get anywhere sorting this mess out through talk- you _obviously_ don't give a crap for my view on your screw-ups, as befits the cocky little kid that you really are-, so I'm just going to cut to the chase..."

With that, he reached into the box, pulled out a large, apparently fuel-powered chainsaw, pulling the cable to set its teeth in motion for a few moments before he turned to look at Sweets once again, head tilting inquiringly to the side as he spoke. "Do you favour your right or your left leg?"

Sweets's eyes widened at the obvious implications of that question.

"Wh-what?" he whispered in shock.

No matter how nonsensical the last few minutes had been- how could Booth have killed so many people and yet still 'care' about making his convictions look good in a court of law?-, Booth _couldn't_ mean what he thought he meant...

"Well, you're going to lose _one_ of them right now; I'm just trying to think of your long-term life assuming the rest of the team get here in time to stop you bleeding to death from it," Booth said, shrugging as though he was just discussing Sweet's thoughts on last night's football game rather than plans to amputate a limb. "Count yourself lucky that I'm in a good mood; I could take an arm, but considering that you spend most of your time sitting down I figured that you'd miss your leg less..."

He raised a curious eyebrow. "So, which one do you want to take?"

It was when Sweets saw the utter, simple certainty in Booth's eyes that really terrified Sweets; unless someone showed up to stop him, the man a part of him considered a mentor and 'father' figure was _going_ to take one of his legs off with an extremely dangerous instrument _while he was still conscious_...

"Please..." Sweets whispered, staring in horror at Booth, barely noticing the faint prick of tears in the corner of his eyes as he shook his head in desperation. " _Don't_..."

"Sorry, Doc," Booth replied, pulling on the cable to start the chainsaw again as he looked at Sweets. "We're _way_ past the point where I'll stop; all that matters right now is which leg I decide to take off while we're here."


	12. The Limb in the Warehouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No idea if some of the minor medical details included here regarding amputating limbs are accurate, but I think they work; if anything blatantly contradicts reality, let me know and I'll change it if I can

As he pulled up in front of the warehouse that was the most likely candidate for Angelus's current location- close enough to Sweets's apartment building for Angelus to make it there and back in fairly little time, potential sewer access, and it had _definitely_ been abandoned long enough for Angelus to take it for his purposes-, Booth tried not to think too much about the condition that Sweets might be in when he found the guy.

He might like the guy as a person- something about his eager-to-please-yet-constantly-analytical nature reminded him a bit of a male Fred, except with an expertise in psychiatry rather than physics-, but he couldn't help it if he found Sweets's 'insistence' at conducting research into their partnership to be a bit frustrating at times; after some of the things he'd been through, it was only natural that he'd have trouble with people at times, but he and Bones had proved time and again that they worked well together...

"Any ideas what we can expect to find when we get in there?" Cam asked, looking urgently over at Booth as the two of them and Bones got out of the SUV (Hodgins and Angela had decided to remain at the lab and see if they could find anything else due to their comparative lack of physical combat capabilities compared to the other three, although Booth was already making plans to try and give them some quick lessons soon).

"He probably won't have minions- he hasn't had the time to properly establish himself without attracting too much attention from the wrong people, and anybody who'd follow him would probably be too stupid to support his bluff that he's me-, but just in case, remember; use the crucifix to hold them back and try and get somewhere in the sunlight," Booth said, looking urgently between the two women as he spoke. "Vampires of Angelus's age can tolerate it in short 'doses' if they have to, but given the pain involved he wouldn't do that unless he was desperate, and we're too early in this particular 'game' for him to have reached that point yet."

For a moment, Bones looked like she was about to ask for more detail regarding what Booth meant by that last comment, but he was grateful when she apparently decided to ask that question later. Nodding in resolution at the two women, Booth drew his gun in one hand and a short sword in the other- he had a couple of stakes in his wrist-launchers under his coat, but he wanted something that would allow him to do _some_ damage at first- before he turned and hurried into the warehouse, his eyes quickly falling on the large pile of boxes near the centre of the building just as a familiar figure walked out from between them, smiling casually at the three figures now standing in the sunlight doorway.

"You're early," Angelus said, glancing at his watch with a mocking smile before he looked back up at the three investigators standing before him, the malicious smirk on his face making his easily distinguishable from his human counterpart despite the fact that he was wearing a dark suit similar to Booth's usual attire. "I expected you to take a few more minutes at least; guess I under-estimated how tricky I needed to make the clues."

"Hold on; you _knew_ that we'd find you?" Cam said, looking at Angelus incredulously; to her credit, Booth noted that she continued to aim her weapon at his other self despite the fear she'd shown after learning what they were up against. "How did-?"

"I remember being involved in pretty much every investigation he's run with your lab techs before he had his tumour taken out; you _really_ think I didn't pick up _any_ ideas about how you guys operate from that time?" Angelus said, indicating Booth with a casual shrug as he smirked in amusement at Cam and Bones. "He may _act_ dumb, but that photographic memory of his lets him pick up quite a bit of stuff from all that time he's spent hanging around with you-"

"You have a photographic memory?" Bones asked, turning to look at Booth with a slight smile even as she kept her gun trained on Angelus.

"It's better for remembering faces and events than facts, Bones, and it's not that fun, trust me," Booth said, shaking his head to take his mind off the images her comment had evoked- thinking about his memory always brought him back to some of the stuff he had to remember because of it even when he didn't want to, and he couldn't even blame the damn curse for it-, as he continued to keep his gaze and weapons aimed at his other self. "What's important right now, _Angelus_ , is what you're trying to accomplish here by _deliberately_ setting things up so that we'd find you here, since I doubt that you were just going to give us Sweets and make this at least _somewhat_ easier on yourself?"

"Yeah, you've got that right; I just wanted to see what I could do when up against the new brain trust," Angelus clarified, indicating the two women with a smile. "After all, my last couple of times out were just up against a bunch of people whose big strategies against me consisted of 'hit him until he's down and curse him when he is'; I didn't want to just dive into a straight fight when an _intellectual_ challenge would be so much more stimulating."

"We've played games before-" Brennan began.

"Yeah, yeah, but did Epps have an in-depth knowledge of your lives from even _before_ you started working at the Jeffersonian and a century or so of experience at screwing with peoples' lives?" Angelus asked, smirking slightly before he snapped his fingers and focused his attention on Brennan, who was clearly trying to conceal her shock at the casual knowledge he'd just demonstrated (Not that Booth could blame her; for all her intellect, it was still asking a lot for Bones to accept the supernatural this quickly and on this kind of scale). "Talking of which, that reminds me; since you evidently know who and what I am now, how does it feel to know that your 'shining knight in FBI-standard-issue body-armour' has a body-count bigger than anyone- hell, bigger than _every_ one you've ever put away added together?"

"He's not _you_ ," Brennan countered, her eyes narrowed as she glared at Angelus, the simple certainty in her statement touching Booth even if he could quickly guess what Angelus was about to say. "Booth isn't _capable_ of what you are-"

"And yet _he_ was the one who set a couple of people on fire- _knowing_ that it wouldn't kill them, I might add- and killed a noble champion of good who was totally incapable of lying just to make a point, and that's not even the _worst_ thing he did," Angelus countered, smirking slightly as he looked at Brennan. "Trust me, just because he wasn't going out there brutally murdering people doesn't mean he's the 'good' guy here; I'm the part of him he didn't like to let out, but that doesn't mean he never used me back then."

"I never tried to hide what I was, Angelus," Booth said, glaring at his vampiric alter ego, trying to ignore the shocked expression on Bones's face at Angelus's last comment; he'd worry about providing explanations once he was sure that Angelus wasn't going to kill them all. "And don't even _think_ about trying to use what Cordelia said against me; given that Jasmine was the one in control at that point, I think we both know that anything she said then is about as reliable as the kind of crap you sprout on a daily basis-"

"Yeah, maybe, but don't forget; _you_ were the one who mentioned that you enjoyed the memory of what it was like to be me," Angelus said, shaking his head as he looked at Booth with a smirk. "What was it you said to Cordelia once? Oh yeah; 'there is no guilt, there is no torment, no consequences; it's pure. I remember what that was like... and sometimes I _miss that clarity_ '-"

"That doesn't make him a monster; it just makes him _human_ ," Cam said, tightening her grip on her weapon as she continued to stare at Angelus, even if Booth didn't miss the briefly apprehensive glances she and Brennan both shot in his direction. "Anyone who's _not_ wanted to give into that kind of temptation is either a saint or lying through their teeth; the only thing that we _can_ do is not let those emotions control us when it counts."

"Deny what you are and it just comes back to haunt you later, 'Camille'; I'm the undead proof of that," Angelus said, still smirking as he studied the pathologist. "And look at yourself, really; administrator to a woman who could easily do your job but lets you handle it simply because she was never really _interested_ in doing it. You _do_ know that you're the dumbest person in that whole lab-?"

" _Hey_!" Cam tried to interrupt.

"Oh, c'mon; you never noticed?" Angelus asked, grinning in amusement at the woman's indignation. "Booth's me, Hodgins, Sweets and Bones are geniuses- even if Sweets was a bit of a sociopath-, Angela's invented one of the most advanced holographic systems ever even if she doesn't go on about her brains, Zach was brilliant if a bit nuts even before he actually _went_ nuts, and even the current interns rotating through the system are a cut above the average- no matter how weird some of them are-; the only person who's _not_ intellectually head-and-shoulders above the man on the street in that building these days is _you_."

"I didn't get my job because I _look_ good, Angelus-" Cam began.

"Never said you did; I just said that you're not as bright as the rest of your team-," Angelus began.

"Was," Booth said suddenly, horror spreading across his face.

"What?" Brennan asked, looking in confusion at her partner.

"You said that Sweets _was_ a sociopath," Booth said, ignoring Brennan as his gaze focused on Angelus, horror spreading in his eyes as he looked at his alter ego. "What did you do to him?"

"Oh, just gave him reason to think about his career choice and some of his previous exercises of 'professional judgement' by showing him what a _professional_ sociopath looks and acts like; nothing major, really," Angelus said, shrugging dismissively as he indicated the pile of boxes behind him. "He's just in there if you want to get him out... but I'd hurry; things weren't looking too good for him last time I saw him."

Before any of the Jeffersonian staff could respond to that, Angelus turned around and ran towards the back of the warehouse, moving at a rapid speed that Booth had almost forgotten he used to be capable of (He generally missed the enhanced strength he'd possessed as a vampire more than he missed his speed, even if he recognised that the two were connected). For a moment, Booth thought about running after Angelus- he couldn't outlast Angelus in a race, but he could still maybe catch him in a quick sprint if he put enough effort into it-, but then he heard a faint groan from inside the pile of boxes and pushed that thought aside.

As much as he hated the idea of letting Angelus get away after what had happened the last time, right now, whatever Angelus had done to Sweets had to take priority over catching the vampire in question.

As he hurried towards the box, Bones and Cam close behind him- evidently having either come to the same conclusion as him or decided to simply follow his lead-, Booth's eyes widened in shock as he saw what had happened to the young psychiatrist as he sat tied to a chair in the middle of the small 'circle' created by the pile of boxes. Although Sweets was clearly breathing, he was also unconscious, and the gasps of discomfort he gave as he slept made it clear that he was in pain even before Booth looked down.

Where Sweets's left leg had been the last time Booth saw him was nothing but a half-removed stump, the leg having been viciously assaulted below the knee with what was obviously some kind of electronic tool; nothing Booth knew of could have done that kind of damage with only human limbs behind it, no matter how skilled Angelus was.

Judging by the obvious lack of blood splatter around the area beyond the blood on Sweets's chair and his right trouser leg, Sweets had passed out from the pain after his leg was removed and fallen into unconsciousness before he could make any attempt to move the leg, but it would still have hurt like Hell for the few moments before the pain had overwhelmed his mind. To Angelus's 'credit', he had tied a tourniquet around the limb, but that didn't mean that Sweets was going to be all right for much longer; with the amount of nerve damage that leg had sustained, Sweets would never walk comfortably again no matter what medical treatment he received, and whatever blood loss he sustained between now and getting professional medical attention was only going to make things worse.

"Oh my God..." Cam whispered, her eyes wide in horror as she stared at the bleeding, mutilated stump below Sweets's left knee where his lower leg and foot had been.

"Chainsaw," Booth muttered grimly.

"How-?" Bones began.

"He always wanted to use one," Booth clarified, looking solemnly at the mangled mess where the psychiatrist's leg would now never be; even if they could somehow find the leg in the time before it decayed past the point where it could be reattached, Angelus had obviously done too much damage to the limb for it to be returned to its original owner.

"Call the hospital," he said, looking grimly back at Cam even as he walked over to check Sweets's pulse at the neck, relieved to note that it was slightly fast but nevertheless stable; Sweets must have passed out from the pain and shock of what was being done to him, but he still seemed to be alive. "Let them know we've got a guy coming in with a seriously damaged and improperly amputated limb; sooner we get this treated, the better."

"And... Angelus?" Bones asked, looking uncertainly at him as she indicated the direction that the vampire had ran earlier.

"He'll be focusing on our reaction to this for the moment before he starts coming up with his next plan; we have to stay focused on the present without worrying about things like that," Booth said, as he crouched down and began to quickly undo Sweets' ropes, waving Cam over to examine his tourniquet to make sure it would hold up long enough to get him to the hospital. "Given how much he'll hate you guys, he'll want to take his time and let you get some hope that you'll survive whatever he has to throw at you; after something like this, he'll give us a day or two before he tries something else."

"Why would he-?" Cam asked.

"You made me feel human; anything that makes me feel human _has_ to die because he just can't accept the memories that it leaves him to deal with," Booth said, shaking his head grimly before he turned his attention back to Sweets, undoing the last rope before he crouched down to pick up the psychologist in his arms. "Let's go; we've got to get him to the hospital before that limb gets any worse."

Judging by the expressions on Bones and Cam's faces, they had recognised the various questions raised by Angelus's comments as much as he had, but they also acknowledged that this wasn't the time to try and deal with them; Sweets's life had to take priority before he started answering any of their questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dramatic, I know, but you have to face facts; Angelus is NOT a nice man, and after all the times that Sweets had screwed up in the past, I was in the mood to satisfy his chainsaw-related desires while reinforcing for the squints just how dangerous he can be.


	13. The Guilt of the Agent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit ambiguous about this chapter- it's more of a filler than anything as Booth tries to 'disarm' Angelus's main weapon against him by telling the squints about some of his more questionable decisions as Angel in a better context than what Angelus would use if he brought these topics up first-, but I've got plans for the next few which include the appearance of a _very_ particular acquaintance of Angel's (Although it's not who any of you would expect, I assure you; just think of the one vampire-hunter Angel knew whom Angel would be _least_ likely to call for help...)

As they stood grimly in the corridor outside Sweets's hospital room, Booth tried not to think too much about the expressions on Bones and Cam's faces as they glared at him; they might not be asking too many questions right now, but he knew that his desire to avoid that kind of discussion until they knew what was going to happen to Sweets couldn't last forever.

God... he'd been hoping that Angelus would just start with the peripheral acquaintances and work his way inward like he had in Sunnydale- Los Angeles had been a more unique situation as then Angelus had his old 'grudge' against the Beast to keep himself occupied-; why would he have gone after _Sweets_ so quickly...?

The worst part was that Booth knew the answer to that question without even thinking about it; his temper when it came to Sweets was so short at the best of times- having the guy around might make it easier to convince people that they had legitimate reasons for suspecting that certain people were capable of committing crimes than just his gut instinct, but that didn't stop him getting annoyed at the times when Sweets poked his nose into their personal lives apparently just for the heck of it-, the guy would probably have been the first person he'd go after if _he_ ever went psychotically nuts himself.

He just hoped that he'd predicted how Angelus would react to their recent 'victory' correctly; they might each know approximately what the other was going to do, but that only gave them an edge up to a point.

It was like a more lethal version of something he'd seen in this anime show he'd watched a few episodes of with Parker; one episode had two friends competing against each other in some kind of card game, and one guy had driven himself to frustration trying to work out if his friend had played a 'Magic Card' or a 'Trap Card'- he thought that was the expression used, anyway- based on the idea that his friend would know the speaker would know he'd play one of the two, but then the other guy would know _not_ to do that, and so on virtually ad infinitum (He wouldn't recall what the other guy had ended up playing in the end, but that wasn't relevant to the current topic anyway).

Just like with those two friends, he and Angelus knew what the other would do in a _normal_ situation- if Angelus had been torturing a random victim while Booth was trying to protect them, anyway-, but there was no way to know whether they'd try to double-bluff the other by doing what they'd do normally or if they were going to do the obvious thing to catch them off-guard; either explanation could work...

Booth was drawn away from that potentially repetitive train of thought when the sound of a door opening prompted him to glance up, smiling slightly at the sight of Hodgins and Angela walking into the waiting area; the current interns had apparently been called in to keep an eye on the lab in case Cullen called for help on a case of some sort- given that, according to official records, Booth was still on vacation, calls would be sent directly to the Jeffersonian rather than to him-, but Cam was apparently confident enough in their ability to handle things back in the lab in her absence.

"How is he?" Angela asked anxiously.

"Angelus hacked his left leg off at the knee with a chainsaw for the sake of it; how do you _think_ he is?" Booth said, glaring at the artist for a moment before he shook his head apologetically. "I'm sorry; I just... _dammit_ , I thought I wouldn't have to _worry_ about this any more..."

"Do you mean the whole... supernatural... thing, or just Angelus?" Hodgins asked; to the entomologist's credit, he was able to get the word 'supernatural' out despite his obvious discomfort with the idea.

"Both," Booth confirmed, nodding grimly at Hodgins. "I mean, I went out on the occasional patrol if work had been a bit quiet or I saw something in the paper that suggested we had a few vamps around Washington, but generally I just stuck to what I know I can do now; the trouble with spending two and a half centuries as a vampire is that you run the risk of forgetting that you can't fight like that any more..."

For a moment, the room simply sat in silence, the squints looking uncomfortable at each other as they also shot brief glances at Booth, before Brennan took it upon herself to break the silence.

"What he said back there, about you... setting two people on fire..." she began, looking uncertainly at him as though she wasn't even sure she wanted him to answer the question. "Did you..."

"They were vampires I'd created back when I was soulless who were planning a murdering rampage through the streets of Los Angeles; I set them on fire so that I could stop that rampage until I was ready to kill _them_ ," Booth said, looking grimly back at Bones despite the obvious horror in her eyes (He acknowledged it was slightly bending the truth, but it was easier than explaining everything about his complicated relationship with Darla at that point in his life). "I had my soul back; I never said that I was a saint."

He hated the thought that he would have to tell Bones more about his past, but he had to face the facts; even if he didn't tell them the truth about some of the more questionable decisions he'd made when he was Angel, Angelus would have no such qualms about telling them what he'd done.

At least if _he_ told them the truth now, he could explain the reasons behind what he'd done rather than allow Angelus to tell his more twisted version of events later and definitely turn them against him (Even if they didn't see him the way they always had in the past after they learned the truth about him, he would have at least been honest with them when it counted).

"But... look, I get that it was probably hard for you-" Angela began, trying to look comfortingly at him despite her obvious unease at the simple way he'd phrased that statement.

"That's not the worst thing I did," he interjected, looking around at the rest of the squints, fear pushed aside by the necessity of what he was about to say. "You need to understand this; Angelus will try and create discord among us by taking everything that _I_ know about you and using it against you, and he'll _definitely_ be interested in turning you all against me by telling you the parts of my past that I'd rather I didn't have to tell you about."

"Look, we _get_ that Angelus isn't you; we're not going to blame you for _anything_ he did-" Hodgins began, with an earnest resolution that would have touched Booth under other circumstances.

"Hodgins, just because I had a conscience doesn't mean I was perfect; I did some bad stuff _with_ the soul even after I left Darla," Booth said, glaring resolutely at the entomologist- as much as he appreciated Hodgins's understanding, he had to be blunt right now-, allowing the other man time to remember his earlier comment about having killed people after he got his soul just so that he could stay with Darla for a while before he continued talking. "Back in the fifties, I discovered a Thesulac demon- a demon that fed on paranoia- was living under a hotel where I was staying in Los Angeles, and I started planning an attempt to take it out, but then the residents hung me after someone I'd been trying to help turned on me in a panic- it was the McCarthy era and she had a mixed-racial background; it wasn't a good era for someone like her-, and I just walked out and let the demon have his way."

"Oh," Cam said, looking awkwardly at Booth.

"You'd just been... well, even if the actual act of hanging hadn't killed you, everyone involved had _intended_ to kill you; it's a natural reaction-" Brennan began.

" _Don't_ defend me, Bones," Booth said, glaring at her resolutely. "I may have gone back and stopped the demon for good later, but that still resulted in several decades of that thing feeding on innocent people whose only crime was choosing the wrong hotel to stay in, because I was too goddamn _bitter_ to look past the people who screwed up and condemn them for the actions of the people who just panicked enough to stir up everyone else..."

He groaned in frustration as he slumped back in his seat, staring in self-exasperation at the ceiling. "I never killed anyone back then, and I occasionally got involved to save lives if something was happening _right_ in front of me, but I didn't really do anything to try and help people, and even after I started trying..."

"You weren't exactly Mr Nice Guy to the bad guys?" Angela asked, trying to briefly smile at the special agent to lighten the mood before the glare he gave her in response prompted it to die down. "I mean... look, you were up against some pretty ferocious guys if what you've told us about Angelus is any indication; it was probably merited..."

"What's the most extreme thing you did to someone back then?" Hodgins asked, smiling slightly encouragingly at Booth (The agent made a mental note to see about talking with Hodgins about that; the man was sometimes a bit _too_ cheery about some of the more unusual deaths they encountered in this business, even if it was mainly because of the science behind the murders rather than the murders themselves).

"Well..." Booth said, the part of himself that would always be Angel- the champion who did what was necessary to protect the innocents from the monsters, rather than the agent who had to be far more aware of the line separating him from the humans he fought- allowing himself to feel some satisfaction at the memory Hodgins' query had provoked, "there was this one time I broke a guy down into his component body parts and buried him in a building foundation, but given that he was a deranged stalker who'd mastered a form of psychic surgery that allowed him to take his body-parts off and reassemble himself at will, I think it's safe to say that doesn't count as a _bad_ thing-"

"Hold on; he could take himself apart?" Cam asked in confusion. "How could-?"

"He could send his eyes to watch her when she was alone or use his hands to feel her up in her bedroom while he just stood outside her building," Booth clarified, looking grimly over at Hodgins before he continued his story. "Anyway, the guy was planning to kill her for 'rejecting' him and that was the only way I could think of to stop him without revealing his powers to a prison; every other bad guy I took out I stopped fairly quickly, and I only ever killed humans if I was sure I had to."

"There you are; nothing to worry about, you see?" Bones said, smiling in an awkwardly reassuring manner at him. "We always knew that you would only kill someone if you were sure you had to do so to prevent greater suffering later; I'm sure that applies to everyone-"

"I once killed a famous warrior for good who saw me as a brother just to complete my plan to infiltrate the Circle of the Black Thorn," Booth cut in, not wanting to hear any more of Bones's praise when he was in this mood.

"Uh... just to check, the Circle of the Black Thorn was that group you mentioned were the real 'power behind the throne' guys, right?" Hodgins asked, raising a slightly awkward hand to draw Booth's attention to him.

"Yeah, they were," Booth confirmed with a grim nod. "I didn't plan for that to happen or anything, but there it was; I had to infiltrate the Circle so that I could destroy them, and in order for the Circle to believe that I was serious about joining them, I had to kill a guy who'd done nothing but help me in the past."

"Ah," Hodgins said, looking uncomfortably at the squints, the three women simply looking at Booth in silence as they processed what he'd just said.

Booth couldn't blame their uncertainty at the news he'd just told them; knowing that he'd killed bad guys was one thing, but the fact that he'd killed an ally- even if he hadn't set out to do something like that, he'd still gone through with the sacrifice for what he'd anticipated would be an essentially short-term goal- wasn't something that could be as easily excused.

"Is... is that it?" Cam asked at last, looking uncertainly at him. "Is that... the worst thing you did?"

"Almost," Booth said, looking hesitantly at his hands as he flexed his fingers, the memory of what he had done with these hands making him feel slightly sick at himself even before he began to share his last story with them. "To understand the worst thing I did, you need to understand something else; Parker's my second son."

"Second?" Cam repeated, her eyes wide as she looked at Booth in shock before she shook her head in confusion. "OK, so you... had a son while you were alive back in-"

"Connor was conceived and born a few years before I Shanshued," Booth interjected.

"Huh?" Angela said, looking at him in confusion.

"But... surely as a vampire, you're... well, technically deceased?" Brennan asked, looking at Booth uncertainly. "I can maybe understand how you were able to have intercourse in that condition- judging by Angelus's reactions in a fight, your body can still respond to outside stimuli the normal way when you're a vampire; you must be able to operate on some kind of reflex to make enough blood flow to achieve an erection-, but that doesn't explain how you could actually _conceive_ -?"

"One of my friends back then thought it might have been related to these mystical trials I took a few months before Connor's conception; it's a long story and the issue of _how_ it happened isn't relevant to what I did afterwards," Booth said, shaking his head in a dismissive manner before he focused his attention back on his original topic. "Anyway, after his birth- his mother had to stake herself so that he could be born because her body still wasn't capable of giving birth even if she had managed to carry the baby so far-, he was abducted by Daniel Holtz, a demon hunter whose family had been killed by Angelus two hundred years ago-"

"Hold on; how could he be two _hundred_?" Hodgins asked, looking urgently at Booth. "Was it some kind of demonic pact-?"

"In a sense, anyway; from what I learned later, a powerful demon was trying to thwart his prophesised demise by a complicated plan that involved faking some prophecies and putting Holtz in some kind of suspended animation until he could reach the present," Booth continued, pausing briefly at the memory- for all the harm that Holtz had done to him, the man's original intentions when he'd fought Angelus had been good, and a part of Booth would always regret what the other man's obsession had done to him - before he resumed his explanation. "Anyway, Holtz was so determined to stop me from 'corrupting' Connor- he never really seemed willing or able to accept that I wasn't the same person now as I'd been when I was Angelus; he spent so long consumed by vengeance that he rejected anything to suggest that I was already punishing myself enough- that he abducted him and fled into another dimension-"

"Hold on; he fled into a _what_?" Angela asked.

"Another dimension," Booth repeated, already certain that he wasn't going to identify Quor-toth as a hell dimension; confirming the existence of Heaven or Hell would just start off a whole theological debate with Bones that this wasn't the time for. "There's more than a few demons that exist in worlds slightly connected to our own without actually being here; basically think the idea of alternate realities where evolution took a different path, and you're on the right lines."

He gave them a moment to process what he'd just said before he continued speaking. "Anyway, Connor came back a few months later, but one of the tricky things about cross-dimensional travel is that time isn't a constant across realities, with the result that Connor was about eighteen years old when he came back after being raised to believe that 'Angel' was nothing more than an alias for Angelus."

"Oh, _man_..." Hodgins muttered, shaking his head grimly as he looked at Booth. "Your own _son_ wanted to kill you?"

"It came and went, really," Booth said, trying to sound more nonchalant about the topic than he really was even if Bones's sympathetic expression made it clear that she could see the obvious pain in his eyes at this topic. "There were times when he seemed to be more willing to accept the idea that I wasn't what he had been raised to believe I was, but there was this whole thing involving that higher power I mentioned earlier- the one that would have brought about world peace by ending free will- manipulating him to turn him against the rest of my team..."

He swallowed as he looked at the ground, closing his eyes to force back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him at the memory of those terrible few moments when he'd been forced to take up arms against someone he'd wanted nothing more than to protect and shield from everything that had gone wrong in his life-, before he spoke again. "Part of the reason I accepted Wolfram & Hart's offer to take control of their branch was so that they would give Connor a new life- he'd be alive and well-adjusted with no memory of what he'd gone through with Holtz or me-, but in order to give him that life... I had to kill him."

"You _WHAT_?" Cam said, standing up to look sharply at Booth before quickly sitting herself down once again; they might not be in a particularly crowded part of the hospital right now, but they hardly wanted to attract attention to themselves in this situation. "How-?"

"It was a whole symbolic thing- I end his current life and I 'win' the right for him to start a new one-, and it worked; I saw Connor with his new family a few hours later, alive and healthy with no memory that I'd ever been his father," Booth said, his tone grim as he looked around at the shocked expressions on his friend's faces. "I'm not proud of it, but I had to tell you now in case Angelus twisted it around later; anything else that I did back then, I did because I simply had to stop demons or really evil humans from going after innocent people."

For a moment, the squints simply stared at Booth in silence, contemplating what they'd just learned about the man they thought they'd known so well, until Bones walked over to sit down beside Booth, smiling reassuringly at him as she reached over to take his nearest hand in both of hers.

"You're not a bad person, Booth," she said, smiling at him as he turned to look at her, his expression reflecting his uncertainty at her recent actions. "If you were, you wouldn't care this much about telling us about those things."

"I still _did_ them-!" Booth began.

"Considering some of the things you could have done back then, what you've told us sounds like you let them off pretty easily," Hodgins said with a slight smile. "I mean, leaving that hotel in the grip of a paranoia demon's a bit questionable, but considering what they did-"

The sound of a door opening cut further conversation short as a doctor walked up to them a grim expression on his face.

"You came here with Doctor Lance Sweets?" he asked, briefly consulting his clipboard.

"Yeah," Booth replied, looking urgently at the doctor. "How is he?"

"He's..." the doctor began, glancing briefly at his chart before he sighed and looked back at the special agent. "It could be better, really. We've stabilised the blood loss, and we think we've dealt with the worst of the nerve damage, but we had to remove the rest of his kneecap in order to have any hope of fixing the worst of the trauma, and the rest of the leg had to be discarded; even if we could overcome the issue of cellular decay, there was too much damage around the joint for us to have any hope of reattaching it."

"Will he walk again?" Angela asked, swallowing slightly to hold back the worst of her tears as the rest of the team stood grimly around her.

"Well, we can attach a prosthetic limb to make up for the loss- joint replacements are coming along rather well, really; we should be able to get something that allows him to move relatively normally-, but there will be phantom pain around that area for some time, and I can't guarantee that he'd ever be able to do anything physically active like running for at least several months after this..." the doctor said, looking regretfully at the obviously devastated team before him. "How did-?"

"Need to know, doc, and you're better off not knowing," Booth said, looking grimly at the physician. "Is he awake?"

"Not yet," the doctor said, shaking his head. "He's on too many painkillers to really be aware of what's happening around him; we thought it best to let him sleep through the next few hours until we're sure he's past the worst of the pain."

"Call us when he wakes up, OK?" Cam said, not needing to look at Booth to know that he was feeling apprehensive about the prospect of what they might have to deal with if Sweets regained consciousness without one of them being the first ones at the scene; if the suit that Angelus had been wearing during their confrontation was any indication, there was a good chance that Sweets would think that _Booth_ was the one who'd mutilated him...

"One more thing," Booth said, looking firmly at the doctor. "If I come to visit him on my own, _don't_ let me in, OK?"

"What?" the doctor said, looking at Booth in confusion.

"Just be sure to let everyone know that; if I'm not here with at least one of these four, I'm not allowed into that room," Booth said, glaring intently at the doctor before he left after receiving a brief nod of confirmation from the other man.

It wasn't a perfect safeguard, he knew, but it was the best that he could do in this situation; the squints were still too new to the vampire-hunting thing for him to feel comfortable leaving one of them to keep an eye on Sweets when they were dealing with a vampire as old as Angelus, and he couldn't afford to put his search for his other self on hold because of something that might not even happen (Angelus had already left Sweets physically and most likely emotionally traumatised; he'd probably be fine with that for the moment).

Right now, they had to get back to that warehouse and see if Angelus had left any clues about where he was going to go next...

* * *

  
As the Jeffersonian staff left the hospital, they were unaware of the presence of a particular figure standing in an alley opposite the hospital, his dark clothes- now once again clad in his traditional black duster- allowing him to easily blend into the shadows as he contemplated his current opponents.

Angelus would be lying if he said that he wasn't slightly disappointed that his target had survived, but that was just the opening salvo- Kenton didn't count because nobody had known he was active at the time he'd killed the guy-; he had a few more interesting plans in mind for what was coming up...

He _could_ go after Sweets, of course, but where was the fun in that; there was much more potential in leaving him alive so that he could tell Cullen about what 'Booth' had done to him and leave Booth forced to either accept punishment for what he'd done or admit the truth about his past.

Besides, with the 'present' he'd left Booth earlier- walking around in that rug might have been stupid, but at least he'd been able to stay around the back of the building and send it through that back window without anyone noticing-, coupled with the fact that he had an urgent appointment with another old friend of the squint squad who'd come in response to that call he'd made earlier- phones might be annoying, but they made it _shockingly_ easy to get people to practically deliver themselves to you-, he had more than enough plans to keep himself busy before he felt obligated to go back to Sweets...


	14. The Student in the Apartment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another 'filler-esque' chapter- with reference to the episode "The Salt in the Wound", in case you need to know where the victim here came from-, but things get more interesting next chapter, for reasons that will be obvious before this one ends...

As she walked up the stairs to the door of Booth's flat- not an area she'd ever expected to be visiting, but-, Angela wished that she could shake off the sense of discomfort she still felt while in Booth's presence.

She might know that Booth _wasn't_ the guy who'd practically assaulted her during that confrontation in the warehouse, but that didn't stop her from still feeling the pressure of his slightly-cooler-than-normal lips forcibly pressed against hers, his tongue probing her teeth with a force that she'd never even _remotely_ associated with Special Agent Seeley Booth...

Even after everything he'd told them about how the vampire demon that took control after a person was turned was only a twisted corruption of the original person, that part of this whole situation was something that Angela was really having trouble dealing with. She could certainly accept the idea that there was more to the world around her than what she'd previously known was there- Booth would say something about the fact that she wasn't as 'squinty' as the rest of the squints if he brought it up, but this wasn't the time for that debate-, but the idea that there was a part of Booth capable of doing _that_ to her was something else.

Even knowing that it wouldn't have really been him didn't stop her shuddering at the thought...

And that was _before_ she took recent events with Sweets into account; she had been with Booth ever since the agent had revealed the existence of the supernatural to them- she might not _like_ the implication that she was doing that just because she was the most expendable member of the team in the current situation, but she understood the need to give Booth an independent alibi if Angelus did anything and left a witness alive afterwards-, but even knowing that he hadn't been the one to take off the psychiatrist's leg didn't make it any easier to ignore the fact that Booth himself had admitted that Angelus was based on the part of him capable of doing that kind of thing.

They'd trusted Booth for years because they knew he was a god man with a dark past who channelled that darkness to help protect them- the details he was willing to share with them about that past might have been sketchy, but they'd always known he'd never hurt them-, but having to face up to it...

Still, right now they didn't have to worry about whatever Angelus might be up to next; their only concern right now was to get themselves better-prepared for whatever he had to throw at them next. Hodgins and Bones had gone to examine the warehouse for further clues with Cam as back-up- there was no guarantee that Angelus would or wouldn't go back to a compromised location, according to Booth; he might know Angelus fairly well, but that just meant that _both_ of them knew what the other one was thinking rather than one knowing something the other didn't-, leaving Booth and Angela to head back to his apartment and pick up some other weapons he'd apparently kept stored there.

Booth had weapons that he could use against _vampires_ in his apartment...

Angela wasn't sure what that said about his comments that he'd stopped hunting vampires after he'd become human, but quickly decided that it wasn't something she should spend a lot of time thinking about; knowing Booth, he'd probably just wanted to be ready in case something vamp-related happened to him, even if he couldn't have known it would be this... _personal_.

"So..." Angela asked, seeking anything to break the awkward silence that had settled over them in the car, "aside from Angelus's obvious hobbies, did you do... anything else to pass the centuries?"

"I drew a bit," Booth replied with a slight shrug.

"You drew?" Angela repeated, looking over at the agent with an incredulous expression; the idea that she could share something like _that_ with Booth was something that would have never occurred to her. " _You_ drew?"

"I sketched a bit when I was alive- mainly out of a lack of anything else I could do on my own-, and it became one of Angelus's favoured taunts when he was stalking his victims to leave sketches of them in their rooms while they slept if he'd managed to get them to give him an invitation," Booth said, shaking his head slightly grimly as another thought occurred to him. "Of course, he tended to enjoy getting more visceral when he could; some of the things he did to that puppy-"

"OK, moving on from _that_ story- were you getting _wistful_?" Angela asked, unable to stop herself voicing her shock at the idea of Booth looking wistful at the thought of a time period when he'd been so utterly opposed to everything he stood for now.

"Not exactly," Booth said, looking hesitantly at her for a moment before he sighed and shook his head. "Well, Cam and Bones already heard it, so you might as well; what I miss from those days... it's the clarity, OK?"

"The 'clarity'?" Angela repeated in confusion.

"It's all... it's like you and facial reconstruction, where you can just get it right or get it wrong; when you're evil, you either got it right or you didn't, and there's no leeway or middle ground," Booth said, turning to look at the artist to ensure that she understood what he was saying. "I don't miss the fact that I could never count on anyone from that time not to stab me in the back at the first opportunity, but I _do_ miss the fact that I didn't have to spend all that time worrying about being a good role model for my son or focus on playing by the rules to get the bad guys in a court of law..."

He sighed in exasperation. "I _accept_ those responsibilities, don't get me wrong, and I'd never go back to killing people just because it's simpler not caring- the problem with not caring is that you don't have anything that makes it worth living apart from the thrill of killing people-, but that doesn't mean it doesn't get frustrating having to live up to these rules when I used to be able to just solve my problems like _that_."

Angela wasn't sure what she could say to something like that.

Even with these new details about his past to take into account, Angela could be fairly surely sure that she hadn't made any mistakes about the essential essence of Booth's character to realise that he wasn't who he'd been back when he'd been Angelus, and the lengths he was going to while trying to track down Angelus showed that he did care about them, but that didn't stop her being _slightly_ worried about this whole mess.

God... the man she'd been pushing her best friend towards for the last few years was apparently older than the country they lived in, and had spent at least half that time as a murderous psychopath...

There were definitely times when Angela had to wonder what had gone wrong in her life in the last few months; things fell apart with her and Hodgins, her attempt to start things up with Roxie again hit a stumbling block before they could get much further than where they'd gone originally, Booth had had that whole tumour to deal with, Bren had run off to Guatemala rather than face his mortality, and now they were up against Booth's vampire double...

She'd known going in that the Jeffersonian would be a more dangerous job than anything she'd done before when she started working there, but there was dealing with killers and there was being part of a game being played by a deranged homicidal maniac with a _serious_ mad-on for them just because of who they worked with...

 _God_ , Angela was going to need a vacation once this was over.

* * *

  
As he looked over at the forensic artist, her expression the most unreadable one he'd ever seen her assume, Booth wished that he could be sure how Angela was coping with recent events; of all of the squints, her reaction to the revelation of his vampiric past was simultaneously the easiest and the hardest to be sure of.

On the one hand, he'd theorised that she'd be more open to the idea of the world containing more than what was visible and discernible through scientific analysis ever since that case with the missing guide in the desert, but on the other hand she was also far more open to the more straightforward, natural beauty of the world around them than the rest of the team, which might make it hard for her to accept that the world could also have vampires in it. Hodgins was just enjoying the conspiracy angle of things, and Cam and Bones were accepting what he had told them so long as the evidence continued to support the idea that he was telling the truth- even if he was waiting for Bones to freak out once she had the opportunity to mentally process what was happening to her-, but Angela...

It was the other reason he'd wanted her to keep an eye on him right now; not only was she essentially surplus to requirements right now as the investigation continued, but he also needed to keep an eye on her in case she had a panic attack and tried to run off.

The odds of Angelus watching them _right now_ weren't exactly as high as they might have been in the dark, but that didn't mean that they were none-existent; Booth might be fairly sure that Angelus wouldn't keep a constant eye on him if he was searching for other victims, but that didn't mean he was always going to be planning his next 'gift' for the squints.

If Angela _did_ try to run off in a panic, there was a good chance that she would encourage Angelus to step up his current game plan and attack her now rather than later, and Booth was _not_ going to be responsible for any more people dying simply because they were his friends...

As he walked into his apartment, the stench of blood and recently-deceased flesh had Angela screaming before she and Booth even saw the source of the scent, stopping any thoughts Booth might have had about saying something to Angela. Lying in the middle of the lounge area of Booth's apartment, just between the couch and the television, shattered glass all around it that clearly came from the broken window behind the couch, was the body of a slightly overweight young man, dressed in a yellow shirt and jeans with a dark blue jacket over the top, his fingers apparently cut in half with the fingertips missing, and his mouth open to reveal something hanging out of it that neither Booth or Angela needed the bloodstains around his crotch to identify.

"Oh God..." Angela said, holding her hand up to her mouth as though she was trying to stop herself from vomiting, turning away to look at the nearest wall to avoid looking at the body before them. "Someone just... who the _hell_...?"

"Oh my god..." Booth whispered, his eyes wide as he crouched down beside the body, pausing only briefly to pull a couple of plastic gloves out of his pocket- he might not consider himself a 'squint', but he'd picked up a few habits from them over the years- and pull them on as he pushed some of the body's bloodstained hair out of the victim's face to study it better. "It's Clinton Gilmour."

"Hold on; _Clinton Gilmour_?" Angela repeated, the urge to vomit forgotten in the face of Booth's identification as she looked at him in shock. "As in, that kid you mentioned was the father of Ashley Clark's kid during that pregnant sorority case?"

"And the father of at least three other kids that we know of, yeah," Booth said, shaking his head grimly as he studied the body while making a mental note that he was rather impressed at Angela's memory; she'd been in an emotionally difficult personal time at that point after that new break-up with Roxie and her subsequent 'chat' with Sweets (Even if he doubted Angelus would have brought that up; at least in that occasion Sweets had just given private advice that only affected _Angela_ rather than affecting at least two other people), and she still remembered the fine details like that.

"But... but who..." Angela asked, before a look of horrified inspiration hit her. "Angelus?"

"Bingo," Booth said, glaring in frustration at the body before them. "I was a bit frustrated with Clinton's attitude back during the original case; Angelus would have just taken that frustration and exploited it to remind me of the fact that I'm still _him_ even if I don't want to admit it-"

"OK, moving on from _that_ issue, if it _is_ Angelus- and I'm not saying I don't agree with you, I'm just trying to look at everything here- how could he get in here to dump... _that_?" Angela asked, indicating the body while trying not to look at it. "I thought you said he couldn't get into private residences without an invitation-!"

"He didn't," Booth said, indicating the broken window pointedly. "He broke the window from the outside with that brick, and then he threw the body through it; he never actually _entered_ the apartment himself, but that doesn't stop him dropping in other little 'gifts' like this."

"OK, is it offensive of me to say that your vampiric alter ego is a sick, twisted guy?" Angela asked, still trying to look anywhere but the body in front of her.

"Feel free; _I_ think he's twisted, and I've seen his mind from an insider's perspective," Booth said, before his eyes narrowed as he noticed something sticking out from underneath the jacket around Clinton's chest. For a moment, thoughts of contaminating evidence filled his mind, but Booth quickly pushed them aside as he double-checked his gloves; given that he was fairly sure he knew who'd done this, it was unlikely that he'd cause a potentially dangerous amount of 'damage' to the crime scene if he just checked this one item out more carefully...

As he pulled the object out, it didn't take long to confirm that it was what he'd assumed it was; a small note, written in a slightly modified version of his handwriting- like the note that had been left with Keaton's body, there were a few subtle but significant differences between-, expressing a very straightforward message to the reader.

' _I made sure he understood the consequences of his actions_.'

Booth wasn't sure if he wanted to throw up or punch something right now; once again, Angelus had taken his own thoughts of disgust at Clinton's casual attitude towards his potential fatherhood, and twisted it into... _this_.

It was one thing to remember what Angelus had done after he'd done it, but to be conscious, aware that Angelus was out there, and able to do something about it, only to be forced to face an ever-increasing amount of evidence that he apparently _couldn't_ do anything...

"Hold on a minute..." he said, his eyes shifting from the note to the suspiciously clean jacket.

"What?" Angela asked, fear clear on her face as she looked at him. "You've got a dead body in your apartment that we are _not_ going to be able to cover up; what _else_ could be wrong?"

"Clinton never wore a jacket, and he _definitely_ wouldn't have worn this kind of jacket," Booth answered, trying not to think too much about Angela's admittedly valid point; if he was right, he had more immediate priorities than worrying about what would happen if the FBI learned what he was really doing with his 'vacation time'. "This came from a casual suit, but Clinton was barely old enough to get a job in any kind of office, let alone something that would require him to wear something _this_ good..."

Booth trailed off as his nose reached the jacket, his eyes widening in horror as he took in the scent of the clothing he held in his hands.

He wouldn't pretend to be the Hodgins of scents, but he knew enough about smells after so long with a vampirically-enhanced nasal ability to know what he was smelling; the distinctive trace of something that had been exposed to sea air, possibly in the Caribbean, for some time, on a jacket that looked like it was about _his_ size...

If he was wrong about who this jacket really belonged to, he _really_ didn't know Angelus at all.

"We need to call the Bureau," he said, looking grimly over at Angela.

"The Bureau?" Angela repeated. "I thought you wanted to-"

"If I'm right, Angelus just got himself a hostage; what I _wanted_ to do in this situation doesn't really matter that much any more," Booth said, shaking his head in frustration as he looked at the body before him.

They were both active, and Angelus was _still_ screwing up his relationships without him being able to do a thing to stop it; so much for his plans to keep everything under control by making sure someone was always with him...

* * *

  
As he silently watched Booth's apartment- it was really too bad that invitations to Booth didn't count as invitations to him; that would give him _far_ more options right now-, Angelus chuckled at the growing sense of horror just visible on his other self's face through the shattered window.

Getting that jacket on Clinton hadn't been easy, but the trace evidence it would provide was worth the effort; no sense pushing these guys to their limits if he didn't give them a good chance of solving this thing, after all.

Besides...

As potentially risky as it was, he was kind of looking forward to seeing who 'Booth' would get in touch with when push came to shove and he had to call in help from the old guard.

Right now, however, he had more immediate priorities; it was time for 'Booth 0.5' to be made fully aware of the fact that he was the greatest mistake Doctor Temperance Brennan had ever made, and she hadn't made for anything _like_ the right reasons.


	15. The Second Choice in the Warehouse

As he stared at the phone in his hands, Booth wished that he could think of another way around this latest development; he'd spent so long building a life for himself away from anything _remotely_ connected to the supernatural, and now, here he was, left with no other choice but to actually _tell_ them what he had been in order to get help stopping it...

If there was any other choice, he'd be exploring it right now, but Angela had been right; Clinton's body being dumped in his apartment like that had made it impossible for him to even try and conceal Angelus's presence from the rest of the FBI.

His vampire alter-ego's attack on Sweets could be attributed to some random nutcase that the Jeffersonian had managed to track down before he could actually _kill_ the psychiatrist- even if it was unlikely Sweets would be in the kind of mental state necessary to accept their attempt to sell any kind of 'cover story' to him when he woke up; it would probably take some time before the guy felt remotely ready to even _talk_ to Booth after what Angelus had done to him-, but leaving a body in his apartment like that marked an escalation of the current 'game' that he couldn't ignore without facing serious consequences on both sides.

 _Damnit_... Booth thought to himself, as he dialled Cullen's phone number while apprehensively holding his breath at the thought of what kind of response he'd receive after this latest revelation. _Just_ once _, I'd like an easy case_...

The reasons why this case was so difficult might be far from conventional, but he really wished, just once, that he could have a murder case where the victim and killer could be identified in a matter of moments after the body was discovered and that would be that...

" _Agent Booth_?" Cullen said as he answered Booth's call, drawing Booth's thoughts back to the present, the grim tone in his voice making it clear that Book wasn't going to like this conversation. " _What..._ excellent _timing; I was just about to call you_."

"Really?" Booth said, hoping that he sounded calmer than he felt; he didn't think that Angelus would do anything to actually _frame_ him at this point- the 'game' was still too early for Angelus to want to pit Booth against more than what he could do on his own-, but that didn't mean someone couldn't have seen something that they shouldn't have.

" _Yes_ ," Cullen said, his tone grim as he spoke. " _Would you care to explain why I've just been given a note written in_ your _handwriting requesting that Special Agent Tim Sullivan come back to Washington to offer you his insights into a case that you never told me about_?"

"Sorry; you have _what_?" Booth asked, his usual respect for the man who was his official superior forgotten in the face of this news.

" _A note that you appear to have written to Agent Sullivan to come back to Washington to give you some assistance on an unspecified case_ ," Cullen repeated. " _He apparently came back to Washington last night, but he seems to have vanished from the hotel room he checked into the night before; the desk staff were apparently told that he was going to leave in the morning, but all evidence suggests that he never even slept in his bed and all his luggage was still in his room_ -"

"Oh, _shit_..." Booth said, his eyes widening in horror.

If this didn't have _something_ to do with Angelus, he'd eat his gun (In the literal rather than metaphorical sense of the word); duplicating his handwriting would be child's play for his alter ego, getting a victim into a hotel room left the guy wide open for abduction by a vampire due to the invitation rule not applying, and it wasn't like it was hard to work out _why_ Angelus might want Sully back.

God, he'd barely been ready to recognise _why_ Bones dating that guy had bothered him so much back then; why the _Hell_ did Angelus have to go to the effort of creating a cover story to get Sully to come back to Washington?

" _Agent Booth_ ," Cullen said firmly, drawing his thoughts back to the current conversation, " _I assume there's an explanation for that letter I mentioned_?"

"Sir, there is a long and complicated story behind that I don't have the time to explain to you right now," Booth replied, deciding that his best chance was to cut to the chase and hope that natural authority would be enough at a time like this. "If you can just meet me at the Jeffersonian in about twenty minutes, I _promise_ you that I will explain the essentials to you-"

" _I would prefer to hear the full details_ -" Cullen tried to interject.

"Sir," Booth said- he'd worry about his career if they actually survived this confrontation-, "if I'm correct- and I have no reason to think I'm not-, right now Agent Sullivan is in the hands of a psychopathic maniac who is probably planning how to murder him in the slowest, most painful way possible for no other reason than that he finds it fun; if we don't get all available evidence to the Jeffersonian fast, he's going to be dead before we can track him down."

" _Agent Booth_ -" Cullen began, patience obviously wearing thin.

"Just meet me at the Jeffersonian as fast as possible," Booth said, quickly terminating the call as he turned his attention to the other matter facing them right now.

He hated to be so abrupt, but right now he had to focus on getting the available evidence to the Jeffersonian as quickly as possible before it became worthless; whether he was Booth or Angel, issues like social niceties and protocol had to be put aside when lives were at stake.

He just hoped that Cullen would give him a chance to explain himself when they got to the Jeffersonian; this whole thing was difficult enough for him to deal with without having to worry about trying to convince his employers to keep him out of prison...

"Did you say _Sully_?" Angela asked, looking anxiously at Booth, her horrified gaze flicking between Booth's phone and the jacket on Clinton's body, drawing his attention away from his thoughts on whatever might be about to happen to his career and back to the more immediate situation facing him. "As in-?"

"Yeah," Booth confirmed, already hitting speed-dial on his phone as he grimly addressed the artist. "Angelus sent him a note posing as me to lure him back to Washington, and now we've probably only got a limited amount of time before he ends up as Angelus's next victim."

"Oh my God..." Angela whispered, her eyes wide in horror as she sat down in the nearest chair, trying not to look at the mangled body lying in the middle of the room as she desperately sought something else to occupy her attention.

"Look, if you need something else to think about, try this," Booth said, grabbing a leather-bound book from the nearest shelf and handing it to Angela. "It's my sketchbook; let me know if you want to know who anyone is-"

" _Hello_?" a voice said on the other end of the phone, prompting Booth to hold up a hand to halt Angela as he began to speak.

"Bones," he said, his tone urgent, "you need to get Hodgins and get to my apartment; Angelus has killed Clinton Gilmore and dumped his body in the middle of my living room wearing a jacket that we're pretty sure belongs to Sully-"

" _Sully_?" Bones interjected, shock mingling with surprise in her voice. " _He's back in town_?"

"Just got back; what I've heard indicates that Angelus sent him a fake note from me so that he could lure him into Washington," Booth clarified; he didn't want Bones thinking that he was keeping any _more_ secrets from her after he'd already had to reveal his greatest secret to her. "The point is that Angelus left Sully's jacket on Clinton's body, Cullen just called me to let me know that Sully was abducted last night and a note that I apparently wrote was in his hotel room, and we've probably only got a limited amount of time before Angelus is finished with him; either help me find the guy, or deal with the fact that he's dead, OK?"

" _Uh... sure_ ," Bones said, shaken by his abrupt manner but clearly still resolved to respond to his original request. " _We'll... we'll be there soon_."

"Make it quick; I've got to let Cullen know what's happening here before anyone else tells him," Booth said grimly. "This is getting too big for us to keep it contained, Bones; just make it clear that we've got a handle on the situation and we might be able to retain control of this case."

He hung up the line before Bones could start to argue with him about that- saying that they had 'control' was almost certainly an exaggeration of their current capabilities, but they at least had a better idea of what they were dealing with than anyone else did-, and quickly began to re-dial Cullen's number, praying that Cullen would accept his explanation for the abrupt termination of his original call; the situation was rapidly escalating, but there might _just_ be time to get everything under control if they could track down where Angelus had taken Sully before he had the chance to do any permanent damage...

* * *

  
As he sat in a chair in another warehouse- it might be cliché, but these things sometimes became cliché precisely because they worked; so long as he moved around the city it should be enough to keep Seeley guessing about where he was hiding out now long enough for him to finish his work-, Angelus smiled as his latest 'guest' regained consciousness, looking uncertainly at his surroundings before his gaze fell on the vampire.

"Seeley?" ex-Special Agent Tim Sullivan said, obvious confusion on his face as he stared at the man he clearly thought was his former co-worker (That little confusion was what made this moment worth all the effort he'd gone to in order to lure 'Sully' back here; he'd not really been able to spend enough time enjoying Keaton's confusion before he'd killed the guy). "What are-?"

"Y'know, I'd love to draw this out, Timmy, but I'm on a schedule here, so let's just cut to the chase," Angelus said, shaking his head in mock frustration before he looked pointedly at the ex-agent. "You touched my girl, and that makes me _very_ angry."

"I... what?" 'Sully' said, looking uncertainly at Angelus. "Seeley, I don't know what-"

"Look, it's perfectly simple; I'm no longer in denial about my feelings for Bones, and I have _serious_ issues with you going ahead and dating her when you were fully aware of how I felt about her before I was ready to acknowledge it to myself," Angelus said, smirking at the confusion on Sully's face as he spoke; he might not be making perfect sense, but anything to add to the impression that he was a Booth who'd gone nuts would only help his case right now.

"Look, I know I brought that up, but... I mean, she stayed with _you_ -" Sully began.?

"And you dated her even when you had _some_ idea how I felt about it; that doesn't exactly inspire confidence in you as a person, y'know what I mean?" Angelus said, allowing himself a slight chuckle at Sully's confusion; clearly this guy had _no_ idea how to react to Booth when he was acting like this, and was probably trying to figure out if something happened during a recent case that could have caused Booth to have some kind of breakdown. "I was willing to let it go back then, but that was just because I was a coward and a polite git; now that I've had my little recent epiphany-"

"Your _what_?" Sully asked, fear temporarily supplanted by shock at Booth's last statement (God, Angelus loved the way his victims could just 'about-face' like that once they realised what he was about to do to them, and the best part was that he hadn't needed to do _anything_ to make Sully look that shocked; the soul did all the work of establishing a reputation and he got to enjoy the pleasure of taking it apart). "You do... _this_... to me, and you... you consider it an _epiphany_?"

"Hey, I'm not lying to myself any more about what I am and what I want to do to people; I call that an epiphany," Angelus said, grinning casually at Sully as he prepared to deliver the speech he'd been waiting to bring into the conversation (The First hadn't given him any real information about Booth's life that he wouldn't have been able to get on his own, thanks to his memories and a bit of research, but when he'd asked for additional information on Sully's private conversations with Bones the intangible chatterbox had been all too willing to oblige). "After all your talk about how the job could 'corrupt' us, is it so hard to believe that I finally realised that I was wasting my time trying to help people who didn't want to be helped?"

"I meant that we become detached from the horror of what we have to deal with after spending so long tracking criminals; I didn't-!" Sully began, even if the obvious desperation on his face made it clear that even he realised that he was just speaking without any real argument planned out to make his point.

"Y'know what?" Angelus said, shaking his head as he stood up and walked over to Sully's chair, pulling a sharp knife out of his pocket. "I think we've established the essential details of the current situation; time to get on to the fun stuff."

Before Sully had a chance to process what was happening, Angelus had cut the ropes keeping Sully's left arm tied to the chair, grabbed Sully's wrist, and then sharply yanked the arm rapidly downwards, creating an audible crack of bone breaking without any damage to the skin itself. Sully opened his mouth to scream, but was halted when Angelus released the arm to grab Sully's jaw in one hand and the top of his head with the other, holding his mouth shut as he stared intensely into the other agent's eyes.

"If you start screaming, I'm _really_ going to make this painful," he said grimly; he might be in a relatively isolated area, but that didn't mean that there was no chance whatsoever of somebody else stumbling across them if Sully made too much noise. "And trust me, you do _not_ want to see what I can do to make this more painful."

It would be a slow process, but it was going to be all the more enjoyable because of that; he'd rarely had the time to properly challenge himself, so he was looking forward to seeing if he could accomplish his current goal of breaking the maximum amount of bones with the minimum amount of skin damage.

"Please..." Sully whispered, staring anxiously at the vampire as Angelus stepped away from him, "don't _do this_ -!"

"Oh, if you think that's bad, wait until you see what I've got planned for Bones," Angelus added, chuckling at the thought of the _piece de resistance_ he was planning for the forensic anthropologist when he'd taken out some of the lesser targets on his 'list' (It was really too bad that Sully had arrived in Washington earlier than expected, but you had to cope with what you got). "There are _so_ many things I could do to that body- obvious ones aside, of course-, but it's what I could do to that mind that you're _really_ going to be terrified of..."

" _DON'T YOU DARE_ -!" Sully began, trying to launch a punch with his free-yet-broken arm, only for Angelus to grab the fist and squeeze it so tightly that the bones in his fist cracked almost all at once after only a few moments.

"I think we should be clear on the fact that I'm not going to do _anything_ you might want me to do," Angelus said, staring resolutely at Sully for a moment before he smiled and sat back, already contemplating which bone he'd break next as Sully stared back at him, rage at Angelus's words conflicting with his confusion about what had happened to the man who seemed to be his old friend.

Angelus knew that he wasn't going to have as much time for this as he'd like- he might be having fun taunting the squint squad with clues about where he'd taken his victims, but he wasn't going to assume that they'd take _that_ long to find him; they might not have known about the supernatural last week, but they were _very_ good at what they did and he wasn't that skilled at the magic thing himself-, but everything he did would be very efficient, and in the end it wasn't like Sully was anything more than one of the many little 'diversions' he had planned before he got to his main target.

Aside from making sure everything was planned properly, the important thing when dealing with someone like Temperance Brennan was to keep her guessing about what was going to happen next; he started by dumping Kathy's body on their doorstep, killed Kenton, mutilated Sweets, took out Clinton, and now had Sully in his hands...

He wasn't sure about precisely who he was going to go after next, but he had a couple of good ideas in mind before he got to the main target, and one or two names on that list should _definitely_ be obscure enough to keep Booth guessing before he had to bring in an old friend for that particular attack.

* * *

  
As he drove towards the warehouse that the Jeffersonian team had identified as the likely location for Angelus to be keeping Sully- God, he'd never forget the look on Bones's face when he and Angela told her what they'd discovered at his apartment; he'd barely managed to convince her to stay behind after Hodgins identified certain particulates on the jacket as coming from a dockside area with only a couple of abandoned warehouses-, Booth tried not to picture what Angelus would be doing to Sully.

He'd had to deal with some of Angelus's thoughts about what he'd like to do to Riley after they'd first learned that Buffy had a new boyfriend, and those had been unpleasant enough- the fact that he'd fought Riley had only made it worse as Angelus had been given a chance to directly assess what Riley would be capable of taking in a fight, even if he'd generally dismissed the boy as a relatively petty annoyance-; he _really_ didn't want to know what the guy would do to Sully with a few hours of privacy when the guy had been a 'legitimate' threat.

 _Legitimate threat_...

 _God_ , that phrase opened up a can of worms that Sweets would have a hell of a lot to 'discuss' with him if he knew that Booth had ever thought of Sully using that kind of phrase.

He hadn't liked to think about it at the time- things were such a mess at that point in his life, what with things with Epps and-, but even then he'd felt like he was in some kind of bizarre inversion of his and Spike's old 'conflict' over Buffy, except that the other guy got there first and he'd actually kind of liked Sully before things with him and Bones got serious, even if they'd just been casually acquainted rather than real friends...

Still, the facts were the facts; of everyone that Bones had dated since they'd become partners, Sully had been the closest he'd ever come to feeling like he was going to lose her to something he _couldn't_ just beat up or shoot to make it go away (At least, not without losing her in the process anyway), and now, here he was, back in Washington and in the clutches of a guy who'd kill him because it would be amusing _and_ be something that he might do.

God... even after so many years, Sully was still one of the few people who'd ever really managed to get past that 'squint' exterior Bones put up apart from the rest of their team, and now he was being tortured by some psychopath who was only here because Booth had hacked off-

 _NO_.

Booth _refused_ to go down that road; that thought just made him press his foot to the car accelerator and continue at a far more rapid rate towards his destination.

He was _not_ going to start blaming himself for the First's decision to torment him; he'd gone through all kinds of self-blame in the past, but he wasn't going to start berating himself for the fact that something he'd have every reason to believe couldn't hurt him any more had decided to release his greatest nightmare on the rest of the world.

He was here, Angelus was here, and that was that; what had happened to bring those events about wasn't important.

All he needed to do now was reach that warehouse and hope for the best...

Even as Booth and the others pulled up outside the open warehouse door, Booth didn't need to know Angelus to know that it was a trap, even as he also knew that there was nothing he could do; a couple of younger agents were already hurrying into the building as fast as possible, and while they might have been quiet enough to avoid being detected by conventional criminals, there was no way a vampire as old as Angelus was going to miss that...

Praying that he might be in time to mitigate the worst of what Angelus would do, Booth leapt out of his car and hurried towards the warehouse, but the sound of a snap as he walked through the main door was all he needed to hear to know that it was too late.

If that wasn't Sully's neck being broken, he was still a puppet.

 _Damnit_... he thought grimly, as Angelus walked out from behind another pile of boxes, casually dusting off his hands as he looked nonchalantly at the group of agents gathered before him. _So much for keeping anything secret_...

"Ah, Seeley; _there_ you are!" he said, grinning at his human side as though unconcerned about the amount of people who had seen him or the large amount of guns now aimed at him, even if most of the agents were looking in obvious confusion at the fact that the man they were facing looked just like the agent who'd led them here. "How's tricks?"

"All the better for seeing you," Booth said grimly, tightening his grip on his gun as he glared at the vampire, grateful when the other agents around him followed his cue and trained their weapons on the vampire; they might be confused, but at least nobody was asking him any awkward questions. "What did you do with Agent Sullivan?"

"Oh, just spent some time torturing him on the inside without leaving any outside marks- I thought it was appropriate-, but it stopped being fun just when you arrived, so I gave him a quick twist and finished him off," Angelus said, smiling nonchalantly as he looked casually at his physical double, his attitude giving the impression that he either hadn't registered the presence of the other people in the room or if he'd simply decided to ignore them, not even taking the opportunity to mock the obvious disgust on their faces at his last words. "And talking of hurting people, you don't really expect to kill me with _that_ thing, do you?"

"Let's just say I know what to carry when I'm up against people like you," Booth said, his eyes narrowing as Angelus's eyes widened just a fraction, clearly remembering the wooden bullets that Booth kept available in his flat in the event of a vampire-based situation coming up that required him to take action. "Now, where is he?"

"Just took him out," Angelus said, his tone still casual as he glanced up at the ceiling of the warehouse. "And talking of things being out, I should be going myself; no point sticking around now."

With that, Angelus leapt up into the air, vaulting over the boxes behind him before he vanished into the shadows of the roof, leaving Booth to stare grimly up at the area where his other self had just vanished- even if the team could find a way to the upper part of this warehouse themselves, there wasn't going to be anyone up there by the time they reached it; Angelus was too smart not to have some kind of sun-proof escape route planned-, the rest of the strike team staring uncertainly at him.

Not only had he failed to save Sully- God, Angelus had apparently killed him just because they'd arrived here in time-, but now _everyone_ on the team had seen that they were up against a criminal who was the exact physical double of Agent Booth, _and_ who clearly had a past history with his FBI 'doppelganger'.

Whatever he was going to do next, it was about to reach the point where the only way to convince Cullen to keep him on the case was to reveal the truth about who and what he really was...


	16. The Request for the Old Contact

As he walked into Cullen's office later that day, Booth was still silently fuming over his earlier failure; not only had he failed to save Sully- who, according to Cam's subsequent autopsy after he'd convinced the team to take the body to the Jeffersonian, would have still been alive while all his major limbs were broken at least twice without causing anything more than bruises to the skin, up to the point where Angelus had broken his neck-, but now so many independent witnesses had seen him and Angelus in the same place at the same time in circumstances that it would be hard to explain away as anything other than the truth.

He wasn't sure what should be making him feel worse right now; the possibility of having to reveal his supernatural origins to at least some of his colleagues- even if Cullen agreed to help him develop some kind of cover story, _someone_ would have to know the truth-, or the fact that a part of him was relieved he didn't have to explain the supernatural aspect to _everyone_ like he would have needed to do if he'd actually shot Angelus. He _knew_ that he should have just shot the vampire straight away- screw the damn issues involved in explaining why the guy had turned to dust to the rest of the team; that vampire was too damn dangerous to worry about keeping the supernatural secret-, but he hadn't been able to avoid the opportunity to take advantage of Angelus's fondness for talking.

If he'd had time to send off a note to Sully to get him to come back to Washington, there was no telling if Angelus had any other plans or hostages 'on the go' that he'd need to know about; he'd been so desperate to ensure that Angelus didn't have anything else up his sleeve that, by the time he'd registered that Angelus was getting away...

God, he needed to work on his reflexes; he'd grown so used to fighting vampire that were barely in their first century in Washington that he'd forgotten that Angelus was a lot stronger and faster than what he was used to dealing with these days.

If Angelus had been any other vampire- any other one of the few vampires brave enough or stupid enough to come to Washington, with all the security that the nation's capital could possess, along with the occasional remnant of the 'Initiative' that kept an eye on security against demonic incursions-, he _could_ have shot the bastard before Angelus was half-way through his jump to safety...

The fact that he'd failed to save Sully only make this whole situation even more frustrating, but Booth could almost accept that part of the current mess at least. Given how quickly Angelus had killed Sully when he heard someone entering the warehouse, thus making it clear he'd never had any intention of using Sully as anything more than bait, the only way Booth could think of that would have allowed him to save his old colleague would have been to have prevented Sully getting abducted in the first place, and there was no way he could have known about _that_ plan...

God... he'd never realised how accurate the phrase 'it never rains but it pours' could be; he'd spent all these years trying to stay away from the supernatural- with obvious possible exceptions like that whole thing with that decapitated witch in Cam's first few months with them; just because that fireman guy had been lying about being possessed didn't mean that there wasn't _something_ in those woods, given what he'd seen when he'd checked out those tapes out of idle curiosity after the case was over-, and now he was up against his greatest enemy from his vampire days in a completely unprecedented situation that had already claimed three lives and potentially ruined- or at the very least had a significant impact on- Sweets's life from this moment onwards.

What Angelus had done to Sweets...

God, that was another thing he needed to worry about; how would the psychiatrist react when he regained consciousness and realised that 'Booth' had taken his leg?

Cam had told him that Daisy was keeping an eye on her boyfriend and was flatly refusing to leave his side until he regained consciousness- Bones had apparently even offered to grant Daisy a voluntary suspension to ensure that she didn't lose too much credit on her coursework while staying with Sweets-, and she'd accepted their provisional explanation that Sweets had been attacked by someone with a serious grudge against Booth trying to ruin his reputation, but that wouldn't change the fact that, as far as Sweets was concerned, he'd wake up with the memory of having been mutilated by Seeley Booth...

"So," Cullen said, breaking off Booth's train of thought as he walked into the office, his expression grim as he looked at the other agent while taking up position behind his desk, "would you care to explain why I have an entire strike team willing to wear on everything they own that Agent Sullivan's killer was apparently your exact physical double?"

"Ah," Booth said, swallowing slightly as he glanced at the locked office door before he turned back to face Cullen, satisfied that nobody else was close enough to hear what he was about to say. "Well, that is a very long and complicated story that you might not believe if you just hear it from me..."

"I'm asking for the facts here, Agent Booth," Cullen said, still staring grimly at the other agent, his expression betraying no sign that Booth's past history with the other man was going to help him out of this current situation. "I don't care _how_ complicated they are; what I _want_ is to know how you suddenly have a twin brother running around that nobody else knew about."

Taking another moment to look around the office to confirm that nobody else could hear what he was about to say, Booth nodded in silent resolution to himself before he turned back to face his superior.

"If you want confirmation about what's happening here," he said, taking a final breath of preparation before he said the sentence that would almost certainly end his attempt to maintain the 'lie' that Agent Seeley Booth was just another FBI agent, "I need you to contact an associate of mine; are you aware of the DRI... and I'm talking about the one where the 'I' stands for 'Initiative'?"

Cullen blinked.

"The _what_?" he asked, his voice lowering as he leaned over to more directly address the younger agent, an intense glare in his eyes. "Agent Booth, the DRI is a highly secret agency; it's _far_ beyond your clearance level-"

"I was one of their first recruits back when they were starting out," Booth interjected before his superior could accuse him of actually breaking into more classified files, smiling slightly at the incredulity on Cullen's face.

At least he knew that Cullen knew more about the DRI than just the name; so long as he was aware of how long the agency had been active, that statement, coupled with their long experience with each other, should be enough to make Cullen realise that he wasn't lying or exaggerating about his relationship with them.

"But... _how_?" Cullen said at last, his voice lowering as he leaned over to glare more directly at Booth. "The agency was activated in 1942..."

"As I said, it's a long story that you're not going to believe if you just hear it from me, so you should probably get in touch with my contact in the agency if you want independent verification that I'm not nuts; he doesn't know that I was employed by them, but he does know why they'd have been interested in me," Booth explained, hoping that his earnest manner would be enough to convince Cullen to go along with his request despite the lack of evidence. "Sir, I will be willing to remain under observation by another agent until you can bring in an independent source to verify my story; all I ask is that you give me the benefit of the doubt for the next few hours so that I can contact an independent witness to confirm that I'm telling the truth."

After a few moments of silence as Cullen stared critically at Booth, he nodded in resignation.

"All right," he said, his tone grim before he assumed a more contemplative expression. "Just one thing; what type of... hostile... are we dealing with here?"

"Looks human, but is stronger, faster, and older than the average human; he's basically what you'd automatically think of when you heard that kind of description in this kind of context," Booth replied.

"I... see," Cullen said, his expression neutral as he processed that information before continuing his questions. "And your... contact... will explain why he looks like you?"

"They'll be able to vouch for my story when I explain _why_ he looks like me," Booth said grimly. "Apart from that..."

He shrugged. "Well, that all depends on your decision, sir."

Once again, Cullen simply stared at Booth silently for a few moments until he nodded in grim acceptance.

"Fine," he said firmly. "We'll meet tomorrow morning for a briefing; in the meantime, I'm assigning Agent Welling to keep an eye on you until then."

"Fair enough," Booth said, smiling slightly at his boss as he indicated the door; Welling was at least tough enough to hold his own in the unlikely event of Angelus trying anything. "I'll just check in with the squints, and then I'll be-"

"Hold on; you'll 'check in' with them?" Cullen interjected, standing up to glare directly at the other man, his momentary resignation replaced by frustration at this new turn of events. "Agent Booth, I can tolerate your decision to wait until later to give me your explanation, but even if you know about the DRI-"

"They deserve to know, sir," Booth said, looking grimly back at his superior. "Doctor Brennan's security clearance is potentially higher than mine, and they've dealt with some of the most intense cases and killers we've encountered in the history of the bureau over the years; if they haven't earned the right to be trusted with this kind of secret, I don't know what will give them that right."

After a moment of silent contemplation as the two men did nothing but stare at each other, each waiting for the other to show some sign that they were going to give up, Booth continued. "I'm only going to give them the essential details necessary to understand that we've got some experience in this field and we can help them take some kind of precautions against this kind of threat; I won't reveal the full details of the agency's history, I promise."

After another brief pause, Cullen sighed grimly.

"Why do I get the feeling that, if I protested, you'd just go ahead and tell them anyway?" he asked.

"Because this is too big to keep them in the dark about anything that might help them stay alive," Booth replied grimly. "I _know_ what we're up against, sir, and I know that the squints will take this whole thing better if they know that we've done what we can to scientifically analyse these things as well."

He left out his personal thoughts that the whole 'Initiative' thing had been a massive mistake from the beginning; they might have failed to completely 'control' the demons, but at least before Walsh became fixated on her attempt to control everything, they'd done a fairly good job at containing or eliminating the worst of the demons they set out to deal with.

"Fine," Cullen said, shaking his head in resigned exasperation as he sat back down behind his desk. "God, ever since you started working with those scientists, you keep finding new ways to bend the rules..."

"If it helps, they just reminded me of an old rule I used to adhere to rather than introducing anything that wasn't there before; sometimes, you've got to bend the rules to uphold them," Booth said, smiling to take any possible sting out of his words before he turned back towards the door, a more reigned expression on his face. "I'll just... wait in my office for Agent Welling, OK?"

"One last thing," Cullen said, just as Booth had placed his hand on the door. "Who is this 'contact' of yours anyway?"

"His name's Riley Finn," Booth said, a slightly incredulously smile on his face as he spoke the name- he hadn't realised that he hadn't mentioned it until Cullen brought the fact to his attention- before he brought his attention fully back to the conversation at hand. "Can't give you his rank because I never got it and he's probably been promoted since then, but... well, that should be enough, right?"

He just hoped that Riley still had some kind of affiliation with the remnants of the Initiative; the guy might have not done much damage to him in their fight, but he'd at least had _some_ idea of what he was doing, so the chances of him still being alive were _pretty_ good, and it wasn't likely he'd tell anyone else about 'Angel' still being alive unless he felt like he had to.

Riley wasn't a perfect contact, but he was the best Booth had available; he couldn't bring in any Slayers as the didn't really have any 'official' standing that would help Cullen accept their story, even if he didn't want to stay out of that world as much as possible, whereas Riley both had a proven history at dealing with this side of things and wouldn't tell the rest of the people from Angel's old life that he was still alive.

* * *

  
"OK, what's with the new guy?" Angela asked, indicating where Agent Welling stood grimly at the 'gate' to the forensic platform, his gaze fixed on Booth as the other agent sat with the rest of the 'squint squad'; since they were all scheduled to work for the rest of the day, and there was no evidence connecting them to Angelus's actions yet, they weren't going to be under observation themselves, but that didn't mean that Booth could talk to them _completely_ on their own yet.

"Oh, just my minder; until I can provide a good explanation for Angelus, Cullen doesn't want me to leave Agent Welling's sight in case I run off and go psycho again," Booth said, shrugging in a manner that he hoped was more casual than he felt before he looked more seriously at them. "OK, to cut a long story short, I'm bringing in an old... associate... from my time as Angel tomorrow so that I can explain the situation to Cullen; given that he's from the DRI, I might even be able to get him to give us access to more appropriate vampire-fighting equipment for the rest of you-"

"The DRI?" Hodgins asked, suddenly looking at Booth with a broad smile, the thought of his earlier fear of vampires apparently pushed aside by an eagerness to learn the answer to the question that most likely surpassed all three of the other people on the platform put together. "What was the 'DRI'?"

"The Demon Research Initiative," Booth replied; this might be a mistake, but after everything he'd dropped on the squints so far, he was quite prepared to cope with the consequences if it meant giving them a clearer idea of what they were up against. "It was set up in the 1940s to combat the Nazi's use of the supernatural in the war; I was hired as an agent to assist in the recovery of a stolen German submarine in 1943 after it got stuck at the bottom of the sea when a group of vampires that the Nazis were transporting broke out, given that I was the only person they could find who could survive at that depth and probably wouldn't eat the crew."

"How'd that go?" Angela asked.

"I saved the sub," Booth said simply, waving a dismissive hand- even after he'd staked Lawson, he _really_ hated thinking about that time period more than he had to- before he continued his story. "Anyway, I don't know the specifics of their activity in the next few years, but by the start of this century, they had a facility in Sunnydale and their director was carrying out various experiments on demons as part of a plan to use them as weapons; chips in some vampires that stopped them from harming humans by causing them pain if they tried to attack, that kind of thing-"

"Hold on, I think I tuned out for a bit there earlier; you mean the government really _is_ doing experiments on demons?" Hodgins asked, looking at Booth with a broad grin at this confirmation of his more outlandish theories; Booth had a feeling the entomologist only hadn't spoken earlier because he'd been too shocked at the casual manner in which Booth had revealed that information earlier.

"I wouldn't get too excited about it; they're down to basic hunting groups after their last attempt at an artificial experiment went insane and tried to conquer the planet," Booth said, smiling slightly at Hodgins' ever-increasing grin at this news; he wondered if the guy was so grateful to learn that most of his theories were accurate that he wasn't paying complete attention to the implications of what he was being told.

"Back up a minute; the government created something that tried to conquer the _planet_?" Cam asked, looking suspiciously at Booth (Booth just hoped she wasn't starting to doubt his sanity now; with the odds they were facing, doubt was something none of them could afford). "What was it?"

"Human-demon-machine 'hybrid' experiment known as Adam, created by a Professor Maggie Walsh approximately a decade ago," Booth explained. "I didn't encounter it myself, but Buffy and her team confronted it the year after I left Sunnydale; they were able to trick him by removing Adam's power core during a fight, but the resulting death of virtually the entire Initiative force stationed in the base was enough to convince everyone involved tat continuing that avenue of research would be a mistake."

"Whoa..." Angela said, her eyes widening for a moment before she looked at Booth with a predominately confused expression. "Wait, if they screwed up that badly-"

"Actually, Riley was convinced to see sense by Buffy and her friends before the end; he just... left a few months later because he didn't really feel like he was contributing anything to the current situation in Sunnydale," Booth explained, before he waved a dismissive hand. "The point is, Cullen's trying to get in touch with Riley at the moment- from what I heard, he'd become a more hands-on, black-ops-esque operative the last time anyone saw him, focusing on just taking out the dangerous demons rather than trying to study them-, so, if all's well, I _should_ be able to meet with him soon; Riley knows about Angelus, and it's simple enough to confirm that I'm not a vampire any more, but there's no way of knowing what he's doing right now..."

"And in the meantime, what do we do about Angelus?" Bones asked, raising a critical eyebrow as she looked at Booth. "I know that, according to what you've told us about vampires, he can't get to us when we're at home because we need to invite him inside, but that-"

"He won't try and force you out by burning down your house or anything like that; it gets the job done, but there's still a chance that you'll die of smoke inhalation or something like that before Angelus can kill you himself," Booth interjected, shaking his head at Bones. "Angelus might be psychotic, but it's a specific kind of psychotic; it's no fun for him if you don't die the way he _wants_ you to die."

"Our throats in his hands and our blood on his teeth, huh?" Hodgins said, his earlier enthusiasm at the validation of his theories being swiftly replaced by fear as he processed this new information from his friend.

"Pretty much, yeah," Booth confirmed with a grim nod, knowing that his attempt to make light of the current situation was pitiful even if he couldn't think of anything else to say; Angelus always brought out the darker parts of him even when he wasn't _in_ him. "He's old-fashioned that way."

"And in the meantime, we just... what, wait?" Cam asked, looking in frustration at her old friend.

"We've got some potential evidence from Sully's murder that we could analyse; it's possible that Angelus left _some_ kind of clue-" Bones began.

"We'd be going after him without Booth until this 'Riley' guy shows up; I don't really think we're in any kind of position to-" Angela interjected.

"Just... do what you can," Booth said, looking grimly between his friends in the hope that he could cut off the argument by sheer presence before he indicated where Agent Welling was still standing, the other agent looking increasingly impatient as he tapped his watch in a suggestive manner. "I'd better be off; hopefully I'll see you soon."

"You'll... let us know when you hear from... Riley, right?" Angela asked, looking slightly uncertainly at him. "I mean, I get that we probably can't attend the meeting..."

"I'll do what I can," Booth said, smiling reassuringly at the artist.

Somehow, as he took a last look around the room at the four faces staring back at him, the slight smiles they were giving him after his last pronouncement made him feel a bit better about his plan to argue for them to be included in the briefing with Riley.

He might have wanted to keep them away from the supernatural parts of the world, but so far they'd defied his expectations and apparently adapted to it rather well- even if he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop when Bones in particular realised the full _scale_ of what they were up against; so far Angelus hadn't shown anything that couldn't be explained by science like the vampires in those _Blade_ movies, but that was bound to change once she actually _saw_ the consequences of vampires trying to enter uninvited or tossed him a crucifix-, and he wasn't about to let them be left out of the meeting with Riley if he could help it.

He still didn't know what Angelus was planning, but the more that he and his friends planned and prepared for their next confrontation with the vampire who had once been part of him, the more he was certain that they'd be ready for it.

As he walked out of the Jeffersonian, Agent Welling close behind him as they headed towards his car, Booth glanced over at a nearby building, allowing himself a grim smile as he glimpsed the figure standing silently on top of it.

It was too far away to make out any specific details about the individual standing there, but Booth had spent too long doing the same thing as Angel not to realise the 'symbolism' of Angelus's presence there.

 _Enjoy your peace while you can_ , he was practically yelling at Booth. _Just don't forget... I know where you live_.

Angelus's ego might stop him from doing anything without giving them clues to it right now, but that didn't mean that he couldn't taunt him like this.

Too far away for Booth to realistically direct anyone to go after Angelus even if he could be sure they'd stand a chance at defeating him, and doubtless already picking out his next target...

But Booth wouldn't let this momentary long-range encounter deter him.

If it was the last thing he did, he would _ensure_ that Angelus returned to Hell.


	17. The Contact from the Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this chapter meets with everyone's approval; it was surprisingly trickier to determine Cullen's reactions to the news than I expected it would be

As he stood in the Hoover building the following morning, the squint squad gathered around the briefing table as they waited for Cullen and Riley to arrive, Booth tried to resist the part of himself that wanted to treat this new development as a trap.

While he couldn't deny that he appreciated the fact that it had been relatively easy to locate Riley- apparently he'd finished a vampire-hunting mission around Peru a month or so ago and had been given the chance to recuperate after some of the injuries he'd sustained during the fight-, given everything that had happened so far, a part of Booth was just waiting for the other shoe to drop; Angelus had been one step ahead of them for most of the 'game' so far...

On the other hand, the fact that Riley wasn't the obvious choice to call could make him the safer option right now; there was less chance of Angelus keeping an eye on Riley than there was of him keeping an ear out for any news of Slayers coming to Washington, when you got down to it.

While calling in Slayers for assistance would probably be more practical right now, Booth just couldn't take the chance that trying something like that wouldn't result in more people being caught in the crossfire of what should be a personal matter first. For one thing, he wasn't sure what kind of skill-set the new, 'junior Slayers' had- Dana had handled herself against Spike, but that had mainly been because Spike kept getting cocky and underestimating her madness; that was no guarantee of anything-, and then there was the simple fact that, even if Buffy and the others accepted that he'd been allowing them to think that he was dead for this long, bringing in Slayers would just 'remind' Angelus of his other potential targets right now.

So far, Angelus was fairly contained to Washington by his 'focus' on his immediately-available targets of Booth and the Jeffersonian staff, but if he was given a reason to 'remember' Buffy and the Scooby Gang- not that he'd forgotten about them at the moment; he was just focusing on his immediate 'priority' right now-, then things would be bound to get more complicated as he decided to 'branch out' and go after them as well. Bringing in Riley to provide technical back-up might have the same risk, but it wasn't as likely to cause that problem as a squad of Slayers would; given the Squints' technical knowledge, it wouldn't be impossible for Angelus to assume that they'd acquired these weapons by designing them themselves based on Angel's memories of Riley's gear, but there'd be no way to disguise a team of Slayers as anything other than a team of Slayers.

If time hadn't been against them, Booth might have gone with the idea of asking the team to try and build versions of Riley's gear, but as it was time wasn't in their favour, so he was just going to have to go with this guess and hope that Riley would agree to get out of town quickly enough after this meeting that Angelus wouldn't have time to find out about his presence (He doubted Angelus was hiring anyone to follow him in daylight right now, anyway; anybody intelligent enough to keep an eye on Booth without him being aware of it would also start to wonder why he looked exactly like Angelus in a manner that Angelus wouldn't be able to deflect with any of his cover stories).

With the FBI having found Riley, they'd brought him to Washington by simply claiming that they wanted Riley's professional opinion on a case that seemed to fall into his area of expertise and left it at that; it was enough information to attract Riley's attention, but at the same time it wasn't enough for him to start asking questions that might help him realise who had made the request in the first place.

Given that their last couple of meetings had included both the women Riley loved- the girl he'd been dating and the girl he'd married- revealing that they had feelings for Angel as well (Even if Sam had _never_ acted on them and Angel only ever saw her as a friend), Booth somehow doubted that Riley would have come as promptly as he did if he knew _who_ he was here to help...

As he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door from the other side, Booth took one last glance behind him to confirm that the upper windows in the conference room were open enough to allow a small beam of sunlight through; so long as he was standing in the right place, it _should_ be enough to stop Riley making too many assumptions about what he was doing here...

As the door opened and Cullen walked in, the part of Booth that would always be Angel smiled slightly at the sight of Riley Finn walking through the door; it might have been years since they'd met, and they'd never be friends, but it was still nice to see a physical reminder of his past as Angel that _wasn't_ interested in killing him.

"Hello, Riley," Booth said, nodding briefly at the other man, trying not to take too much pleasure in the shocked expression on Riley's face at the sight of him standing in the sunshine.

"What the... _Angel_?" Riley said, his mouth opening and closing in a manner that put Angel in mind of a gasping fish (He wondered if that was how that 'Fish-Boy' nickname he'd heard about had started back in Sunnydale).

"You really went by that name back then?" Hodgins asked, looking at Booth in surprise. "Why-?"

"It started as a sick joke of Angelus's as a reference to Kathy's assumption when he went back to the house, and it was my way of honouring her after I took an interest in people again," Booth said briefly, before he focused his attention back on the still-shocked ex-Initiative agent. "And yes, Riley; it's me."

"So," Cullen said, looking at Riley with a resigned yet resentful expression- not that Booth could blame him; it couldn't be easy learning that someone you trusted had been part of a whole world that you were only just aware of yourself- "I take it from your reaction that you do know Agent Booth?"

"What... _Agent_ Booth?" Riley repeated, looking between Cullen and the man he knew as Angel, clearly confused about what he was hearing. "Sir, no offence, but you _employ_ this-"

"Riley, for God's sake," Booth interjected, glaring at the other man as he pulled a crucifix out of his pocket, holding the object out in front of himself so that Riley could see that his bare hand wasn't affected by the holy artefact he was touching, "I'm standing in the sunlight from an open window, I'm holding a cross, I have _no_ desire for blood, and you can see my reflection in the glass behind you; _what_ about my appearance could give you the idea that I'm still a vampire?"

"Uh..." Riley began, only for his voice to trail off as he looked awkwardly at the group of people around him, noting with obvious relief that none of them seemed to be expressing any sign that they thought he or Booth were insane for talking so casually about vampires even if he also clearly didn't understand what had actually happened.

"Agent Finn," Cullen said, prompting Riley to turn around and look back at the FBI director, "we can discuss questions about how Agent Booth reached his current position later; all I want to know from you right now is if his claims that he was a... a _vampire_... are accurate."

"Well..." Riley began, looking at Booth in a searching manner that suggested he was still trying to find some flaw in the other man's story, before he sighed and turned back to look at Cullen. "I don't know _how_ it happened, sir, but yes; Agent Booth was a vampire when I first knew him, and, for all the reasons he just listed, he's clearly not one any more."

"Right..." Cullen said, looking around the table at the others before he sighed in resignation and took up his position at the head of the briefing table, Riley and Booth sitting down on either side of him. "Well, let's get this started; we've got a lot to cover and I'd prefer to get it all cleared up sooner rather than later."

Angel wasn't entirely sure how to react to the observation that the Jeffersonian staff visibly relaxed after Riley had confirmed his story; a slightly sceptical part of him wondered if they'd still had doubts about his sanity, but the rest of him reasoned that they were just relieved that Booth had someone outside of them backing up his claims.

"So... you're human?" Riley asked after a moment's awkward silence, looking at Booth with fading but still-obvious suspicion at this latest turn of events; evidently nobody else was entirely sure how to start this particular discussion off.

"A prophecy was involved," Booth said, casually shrugging as he responded to Riley's question, trying not to think too much about Cullen's hard stare; hopefully his boss would understand why he'd kept this secret once everything was over. "Trust me, I wasn't expecting this either- Hell, I thought I'd actually signed it away shortly before it happened-, but-"

"You signed away your _destiny_?" Angela interjected, looking over at him incredulously; Booth briefly noted the interesting contrast between the squints' confusion and the obviously sceptical expression on Cullen's face- Cullen's response was natural given his limited knowledge, but the fact that the squints were so accepting of something they hadn't even known about before now was somewhat encouraging-, but also concluded that this wasn't the time to think about that kind of contrast. "How did that work?"

"There was this whole thing involving me signing my name in my blood on the originally-written version of the prophecy about my humanity, but don't ask for more information because I don't get how that would work myself," Booth clarified, smiling slightly at the memory. "The Circle of the Black Thorn- that group I mentioned- did it because they wanted me to 'prove' I was willing to join them by sacrificing my destined humanity, but they didn't get that I'd still do it even if I _wasn't_ going to become human."

"The point of doing the right thing is to do the right thing, even if you don't get a reward for doing it," Bones said, looking at him with a contemplative expression that was lightened by the soft smile on her face as she spoke.

"Pretty much, yeah," Booth said, nodding in confirmation at his partner's understanding of him- Bones had come a long way from who she'd been back when they'd first met-, smiling at the memory as he sat down at the table along with the squints, Cullen and Riley taking up their own position at the top of the table. "They couldn't understand that I'd still try and stop them even if it wouldn't get me anything afterwards, but the whole thing turned out to be academic anyway; according to a couple of sources, I destroyed them so quickly after signing the prophecy that they never had a chance to file the paperwork to negate the prophecy properly, so, once I dealt with the last remnants of their plans and left them deprived of virtually all their valid resources..."

He shrugged and indicated himself. "Well, here I am."

"And... the reason Buffy never told me about this?" Riley asked, looking at Booth with a slightly resentful edge in his eyes.

"Mainly because she doesn't know about any of it," Booth replied, looking grimly back at his old 'rival'. "She never knew about the prophecy back when I was Angel, and she doesn't know that I'm alive now as Booth; as far as she's concerned, I died a vampire in a Los Angeles alley several years ago, and that's the way it'll stay."

"What?" Riley said, looking at Booth in confusion rather than his previous suspicious hostility. "But... I thought..."

"You can still love someone even if you know a relationship couldn't work, Riley," Booth said, feeling more like Angel than he had for years as he looked at the other man. "I didn't stop caring about her- you know as well as I do that it's impossible to _not_ care about her once you get to that stage in a relationship with her-, but I'm in a different place in my life now, and what I am doesn't have a place in her world."

"Just because you're human?" Riley asked, his expression giving no indication how he felt about his theory.

"Because I'm a former vampire who's having to re-learn all my old limitations; even if I wanted to get back in the demon-fighting game, I'm too used to being a vampire to be an effective combatant against the kind of things I used to fight," Booth corrected Riley. "I've still got most of my old skills, and I'm fairly good at the investigative side of things, but I just couldn't adjust to fighting vampires on a regular basis with my current strength; working as a human lets me make a difference on a level that I can cope with, as well as letting me explore different skills, and I keep an eye on things in case something comes up where I might be able to make a difference."

Riley could only sit uncertainly in silence as he looked at Booth, clearly trying to decide how he should take that statement- viewed from the right way, it could be considered an indirect compliment to Riley's ability to cope with the kind of physical strain that Booth had doubted he could handle himself-, until Cullen spoke up.

"Right then," he said, looking over at Booth in clear frustration, "now that we've established why you're here and... _human_... can you explain what this... vampire stuff has to do with the fact that Agent Sullivan's killer looks just like you?"

"Well... to understand that, sir, I need to explain something about how vampires exist," Booth said, allowing Cullen to nod and grant permission before he continued. "You see, when a vampire's created, the most crucial difference is that a demon takes up 'residence'- for lack of a better term- where a human soul existed; I was a unique exception to that rule because my soul was restored, but my demon was still there even if my soul was in control..."

He paused for a moment, looking awkwardly at Riley and Cullen- the only two people present who didn't know what he was about to say-, before he finished his explanation. "Long story short, an ancient demonic power has brought my vampire demon back into existence and given him all the memories I've accumulated since he and I stopped being the same entity; he's trying to destroy me by going after people close to me."

Riley could only stare in shock.

"You... you mean..." he said, swallowing awkwardly before he spoke again, a slightly greater sense of control in his voice. "You mean that... Angelus is back... and he's after _you_?"

"Angelus?" Cullen asked.

"It was my name back when I was an ordinary vampire," Booth clarified, directly his explanation to his superior this time. "As I said, sir, Angelus was brought back as a vampire with the addition of the memories and skills I've accumulated since I was him, but everything he was given is at least six months out of date and there's the fact that he retains all the weaknesses I don't have myself; I've changed my passwords even before I knew that he had independent existence, so he can't get into the building even if he could get around his weakness to sunlight and the need for a direct invitation to access a private residence."

Admittedly, Booth wasn't entirely sure that last would apply in this case- it wasn't like he'd often had to deal with buildings which required official permission for someone to enter them; even Wolfram & Hart allowed people in easily enough even if they relied on their security forces to expel 'unwanted' visitors-, but there was no point raising concerns that he didn't have to; Angelus would have no reason to try and break into the Hoover building even if he could.

"That's... something," Cullen said, nodding grudgingly at Booth's point; clearly he wasn't entirely comfortable with the concept of them being up against a vampire no matter what explanation Booth could provide for the current situation.

"OK," Riley said, nodding slowly as he looked at Booth. "So... you became human, and something... some demon... brought Angelus back to attack you?"

"Pretty much," Booth confirmed with a nod. "I'm fairly sure it's the only thing behind this- if it had other agents it would have used them by now-, but otherwise it's just that thing and Angelus that we're dealing with here."

"And the reason you haven't told Buffy that you're up against that guy is...?" Riley asked, raising a critical eyebrow as he looked at Booth.

"Firstly, you can get your mind out of the goddamn gutter; whatever Buffy and I had, we're both past that stage in our lives, and this isn't the time to drag up old history on top of everything else," Booth said, glaring resolutely at Riley- he had enough on his plate without trying to deal with accusations that he was still in love with Buffy; she'd always mean a lot to him, but it wasn't the same as it had once been-, before he continued speaking. "Anyway, Angelus's actions haven't reached the point where having a Slayer would be an actual asset; I know how he thinks well enough to anticipate what he'll do in a fight even without my strength, and as long as he's focused on us, he'll be more focused on playing his 'games' than finding more victims."

"Games?" Cullen asked.

"He's enjoying the fact that he knows how we think by leaving us small clues so that we have a change of finding his victims before he kills them," Bones explained, her usual direct nature somehow softened by the obviously awkward expression on her face as she revealed that information. "It's how we were able to find Doctor Sweets before Angelus could do anything more... fatal; we're just-"

"You're doing what you can to minimise loss of life," Cullen said, looking reproachfully at Bones. "I _get_ that, Doctor Brennan; what I don't appreciate is you keeping this kind of information secret-"

"We were racing against time to deal with a psychopath who was trying to kill us; we didn't have time to debate matters of protocol-" Bones began.

"Look, sir... with all due respect, rules of engagement or not, what we should or shouldn't have told you is not the issue right now," Booth said, looking apologetically over at Cullen. "What's important at this precise moment is that you understand what we're up against so that you can let us get back to work and try to find this guy before he does any more damage; the sooner we can stop Angelus, the sooner we can put this whole mess behind us and get back to our usual routine."

After staring grimly at Booth for a moment, Cullen turned to look at Riley.

"Agent Finn," he said, his expression grim as he studied the former Initiative member, "what I need to know right now is simple; given your past experience with... vampires... does the scenario that Agent Booth described sound plausible?"

"I can't verify whether or not he's telling the truth about how Angelus is here, sir; the kind of threat capable of doing something like that is... well, it's not something I faced that often," Riley said, looking uncomfortably at Cullen for a moment, as though expecting to receive some kind of reprimand for his potentially inadequate answer, before he continued, a more solemn expression on his face. "However... I _can_ confirm that, if Agent Booth is indeed human, than he's trustworthy; he wouldn't lie about something like this. If he says that Angelus is the threat they're facing, then I can confirm that Angelus is a credible threat, and will be willing to provide Agent Booth and his associates with any and all resources that I can spare to help them track him down before he can do any more damage."

"Can they handle it?" Cullen asked.

Looking over at Booth for a moment, Riley locked gazes with his former 'rival' in a moment of silent contemplation, before he turned back to face Cullen with a slight smile.

"I'm not saying that Angel and I were ever friends back in the old days," he said at last, a slight smile on his face at the memory of those old days, "but he was never the kind of person who'd send someone into a situation if he thought they couldn't do it, and everything I heard about him made it clear that he took care to ensure that everyone he worked with had the training to cope on their own. If he thinks that this new team of his can handle Angelus... well, I'll do what I can to help out."

As the Jeffersonian staff looked uncertainly at Cullen, his contemplative expression gave away nothing about his thoughts on what he had just heard, until he finally looked grimly over at Booth.

"All right," he said, his expression the most controlled gaze any of the Jeffersonian staff had ever seen from him as he looked at the only FBI agent in the room. "For the moment, Agent Booth, we'll focus on dealing with Angelus; after that, we'll... discuss... recent events."

"Of course, sir," Booth said, nodding in understanding at Cullen; he'd worry about the possible threat to his job with the Bureau once he had dealt with the immediate threat to his life.

"So," Hodgins asked, smiling in eager anticipation over at Riley, "what have you got to offer us vamp-hunters?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More exposition than anything, I know, but I've got some more interesting action planned for the next chapter; let's just say cars will be involved...


	18. The Warning in the Message

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: I acknowledge in advance that I'm taking guesses about transit time from Washington to Tucker County here, but considering that Booth and Brennan were able to get there in a couple of hours or so- keeping the time it took the key to pass through Andy's system into account, given that Andy swallowed it at night and it was around the middle of the following day before they got it back-, I think I've got the approximate timings worked out fairly well
> 
> 2: Not my longest chapter, but I like to think it has its charms

"Tasers?" Hodgins said, looking at the contents of the recently-acquired bag in disappointment as they drove towards Booth's flat, the five of them gathered in Booth's SUV to better continue the conversation that they'd started inside the Hoover building. "We're looking for the best the U.S. government has to offer vampire hunters, and we get _tasers_?"

"Tasers calibrated to deliver a much higher shock than anything available on the conventional market-" Brennan began.

"I was expecting something a _bit_ cooler, is all I'm saying; the best the government has to give us is a boosted version of something that _everyone_ could get with the right license?" Hodgins said, looking over at Booth as he indicated the taser and stakes in his hands with a dejected expression. "You couldn't offer us _anything_ else?"

"Nothing that you could handle with your level of combat training," Booth said, shaking his head as he pulled back his sleeves to reveal the stake launchers that he had resumed wearing. "These, for example, are only practical if you've got the timing to use them properly; they'd help you guys carry the stakes easily enough, but you just don't have the reflexes to trigger them in a manner that you could actually use in a fight."

It was the main reason he'd contacted Riley for help in providing the squint squad with weapons; his stuff might have been created by the army for professionals, but the original designers had still started out trying to create weapons that could be used by normal humans, with most of their designs being perfected only by trial and error.

In the end, once the situation had been fully explained to him, getting the equipment from Riley had been relatively straightforward; the hard part was getting the necessary amount. Riley naturally had a small cache of weaponry that he kept close to him when he went anywhere that wasn't his home or specifically confirmed to have no vampire activity whatsoever, but they'd needed to drop in on a couple of old Initiative storehouses to pick up enough equipment for the entire squint squad to be armed (Given Booth's limited contact with the rest of the 'squinterns', he was hopeful that Angelus wouldn't go after then just yet, but he'd received permission from Riley to access the storehouse again if he felt they needed to 'restock' their supply).

"So... how _did_ you know that 'Riley' guy, anyway?" Angela asked, looking curiously at Booth after a few more moments of silent driving.

"He dated Buffy for a year after I broke up with her, and I went undercover in Mexico with his wife a couple of years after he and Buffy broke up to investigate a vampire smuggling ring that was bringing victims across the border," Booth replied with a slight shrug. "Granted, the first time we met he tried to fight me, but he had reason to think that I'd reverted to Angelus at the time-"

"Huh?" Angela interjected, looking at him with new curiosity. "Why would he think that?"

"Uh..." Booth said, suddenly realising what he'd just said and how relatively limited Riley's excuse for attacking him actually was when you put it into words (It was his own fault, really; now that he was _able_ to talk about his past as Angel, he sometimes forgot what the squints still didn't know). "Well... Buffy had just been to Los Angeles to help me out with... something... and he ran into me when I came to Sunnydale to apologise about an argument..."

"Hold on; that was it?" Hodgins said, looking at him in surprise. "She's in the same _city_ as you after you broke up, so this guy concludes that you _have_ to have had sex even when she's dating him?"

"Y'know, if Doctor Sweets were here, he'd probably be giving us all kinds of explanations about personal self-esteem conflicting with the memories of a relationship that Riley probably knew was more serious than anything he had with this 'Buffy' person-" Cam began, looking at Booth with a slight smile, clearly trying to distract herself from thinking too much about the reason _why_ Sweets wasn't here.

"Yeah, that's great; we don't really have the time to psycho-analyse whatever Riley was thinking back in those days," Booth said, shaking his head dismissively as he parked in front of his block. "Look, we've still got to find-"

"Agent Booth?" a man Booth vaguely recognised as one of the more junior agents assigned to his current protection said, walking over to the car with an unsealed envelope in his hands just as Booth and the rest of the team were getting out of the car. "We... well, this was just delivered for you."

"What?" Booth said, looking at the envelope in surprise; it was unstamped and the only thing on it was his name and apartment number. "How-?"

"No idea," the other agent responded, shrugging apologetically as the other squints gathered around Booth. "We've got men at your door and in your apartment in case your assailant shows up, but this letter was just left at the entrance to the block and nobody saw who left it; they'd gone by the time anyone got to the door."

"What's it say?" Hodgins asked, apparently addressing Booth and the other agent as Booth pulled the letter out, his eyes quickly scanning the note scrawled on the paper in its disturbingly-familiar handwriting with increasingly horrified eyes.

' _Time to do a little hunting for a certain little swallower, wouldn't you say_?'

Booth's blood ran cold.

It would have been meaningless to almost anyone else who read the note, but with their mutual knowledge of Booth's history, there was only one person Angelus could be referring to with that particular phrase...

"Andy," he said grimly, turning around and getting back into the SUV immediately.

"Wh- _Andy_?" Angela practically screamed, as she and the other squints piled back into the still-open car before Booth could lock the doors. "As in-"

"As in the kid who swallowed a key; who else could the 'little swallower' be referring to?" Booth said, his expression resolute as he handed the note to the artist before he turned on the car's engine and all but rammed his foot onto the accelerator, pulling out of the parking space and hurtling along the road towards the small town where Andy now lived.

"OK, seriously, would Angelus _really_ go after a little kid?" Hodgins asked after taking a quick scan of the note, trying and failing to sound optimistic as he looked at Booth even as the agent continued driving. "I mean, I get that the kid's grown a bit in the last couple of years, but he can't be that satisfying, and there's only one of him so he can't do that thing-"

"Angelus once killed a baby just to hurt the father after the guy tried to hunt him and Darla, and you don't want to know _what_ he did to the baby's older sister; sometimes, all that matters is the pleasure he'd get from the kill rather than the sustenance," Booth said grimly, briefly glaring at Hodgins in the mirror before he turned his attention back to the road before them. "You have to remember that we're not dealing with _me_ here, Hodgins; we're dealing with a me who's lost all trace of compassion or morality and believes in nothing more than sheer sadism."

"He must _really_ hate you, huh?" Cam said, trying to sound calmer than she felt as Booth turned another corner maybe slightly sharper than he really needed to.

"Actually, he wouldn't," Booth said, allowing himself to slow down a little as the thought occurred to him so that his friends could better understand this. "He doesn't _like_ me and resents me for keeping him trapped, of course, but he's never actually _hated_ me or anybody; he kills just because he's sadistic and enjoys it, not because he ever actually hated any one person."

"Huh?" Angela said, looking at Booth with an expression that Booth could only think of a disturbed surprise. "He's got the kind of bodycount you've told us about... and he's never hated _anybody_ he's killed?"

"It's the kill that he enjoys; what the person did or didn't do to him is fairly irrelevant so long as they suffered a lot while he was torturing them to death," Booth said, his expression grim as they began to approach the city's outskirts. "He's twisted, but he kills because he enjoys it rather than out of anything as straightforward as hate; he might taken longer with some victims- one time he spent over a decade tormenting a particularly cocky vampire hunter by killing everyone the guy knew and leaving his son alive just so that the guy wouldn't completely snap and the son would have to grow up thinking that his father went mad and killed his mother-, but that's just to discourage people from bothering him more than anything else."

"Is that why he didn't kill Sweets?" Bones asked, looking curiously at him. "Because he just wanted Sweets to suffer?"

"He was using any issues I might have with Sweets to make things more personal, but you're basically right, yeah," Booth confirmed. "Sully was just a quick kill for the heck of it; when it comes to you guys... well, it gets a bit more personal."

He just hoped that nobody would start asking questions about why Angelus might have felt it 'appropriate' to go to all the trouble of bringing Sully back to Washington; the last thing he needed right now was for the squints to start asking questions that he _knew_ he wouldn't be able to answer without giving away some of his more personal secrets...

Right now, all that mattered was getting to that town in time to save Andy from the immediate threat posed by Angelus; he'd worry about the finer details of what they'd do to stop Angelus coming back to get Andy afterwards later (Angelus might live in the moment and tackle the more immediate threat most of the time, but he couldn't count on that being the case in the long-term).

* * *

  
As Carol Grant settled into the seat of her car, she couldn't help but smile at the sight of Andy sleeping in the back seat after a long day at the playground- he'd barely stayed awake long enough to help her get some of the shopping packed away before dozing off in the car-; even after almost two years as his mother, the thought that this little boy was hers was something she still had trouble believing.

She would always miss Meg, of course, but Andy's presence in her life helped to make her feel better about the loss of her friend, even without the knowledge of how the town had benefited since her death; Doctor Brennan's investment had given Huntsville a chance to rebuild that it would have never had without her aid, and the economy had been progressing well now that they were back on the map in more ways than one.

With tourists stopping in to visit the local area now that the bridge was back, they'd been able to focus on rebuilding other parts of the old economy, to the extent that Jimmy was now teaching at the high school once again, although Carol had avoided taking back her job so that she could focus on Andy. The young boy in question was coming along well despite the rickets that he'd been diagnosed with shortly before she and Jimmy had accepted custody of him, and it still felt so natural to hear him call them 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' that a part of Carol dreaded the moment when Andy would be old enough to learn the truth about Meg.

It wasn't that she wanted to lie to the boy who was practically her son in every way that mattered, but she wanted to ensure that he was old enough to understand when the time came to tell him the truth; she wanted to be sure that he could appreciate that Meg had really cared about him, and that she and Jimmy loved him no matter who had given birth to him at first...

Just before she could take that train of thought further, she started to move the car forward towards the crossing in front of her, only to feel the car run over something before it ground to a halt, the front part of the car sticking out towards the middle of the double crossing just in front of her. Glancing around, Carol silently cursed her lack of a mobile and the relatively quiet streets- things were improving, but Huntsville was still fairly quiet traffic-wise at this time-, and then felt a sudden sense of apprehension when she witnessed a black convertible coming towards the crossing from the road on her left.

It might be possible help, but something about the way the car was speeding up as it approached the area where she was currently unwillingly parked, wheels unable to move and too far forward to get herself and Andy out of harm's way in time, didn't exactly encourage that idea...

For a moment, Carol could only freeze in shock at the sight of the black convertible moving increasingly rapidly towards her- with the roof up, a part of her noted in that bizarre way that the mind had of registering unusual details in a dangerous situation; who would drive a convertible at this time of year with the roof up?-, until a strangely-familiar SUV hurtled past her and crashed into the convertible from the side just as it was about to strike her car, forcing it off-target as it skimmed the front of her car, creating an unpleasant scraping sound that left her wincing (Carol was amazed that Andy wasn't awake yet; he must have been more tired than she'd realised).

During the split-second glimpse she caught of the convertible's window, she thought that she recognised the silhouette of the person driving the convertible as it rocketed away, but then she registered that the driver of the SUV had gotten out and was aiming his gun after the convertible, and shook that off; if he was here, he couldn't have been _there_.

"Damnit..." Agent Seeley Booth muttered, shaking his head in exasperation as the convertible turned around another corner and vanished from view, slipping his gun back into its holster before he turned to look at her. "You OK, Carol?"

"A... Agent Booth?" Carol said, trying to relax her grip on the steering-wheel- she must have instinctively tightened her grip on it when that car came charging out- as she looked at the group of people now gathering around them; judging by Doctor Brennan's presence and more casual clothing, she had a feeling they were the other members of Doctor Brennan's scientific team rather than fellow FBI agents. "What... who...?"

"Without getting into details, it's someone who has a grudge against me and is going after... certain associates," Booth said, shrugging awkwardly as he opened the door and helped her out of the car with a sympathetic expression, apparently wanting to say more even as something else made him decide to hold back. "We should be able to catch him in a few days- he's stepping up his game more than he would normally; he knows that I'll get him sooner or later-, but in the meantime, I'll see what I can do about getting you and your family somewhere safe; it shouldn't be longer than a few more days, anyway."

"Wh... what?" Carol said, shaking her head in confusion; she'd just come out to do the shopping, and now she was being told that she was being targeted by someone with a grudge against an agent she'd only met a couple of times almost two years ago? "But-"

"Believe me; you _don't_ want to know who we're dealing with right now," a young woman dressed in more casual clothing said, shaking her head firmly as she looked at Carol. "Just be grateful you're OK and go along with it; it'll be safer for everyone."

If it had just been her who'd been threatened, Carol liked to think that she'd have argued more strongly about the lack of information she was being given...

But when Andy's safety was at stake, Carol knew that she didn't have a choice, particularly not when she glanced down at her car's wheels and noticed a long line of sharp metal objects attached to some kind of plastic strip- it reminded her a little of something she'd seen in a few films, now that she thought about- spread out underneath her vehicle; judging by the position, it would have been too close to the car for her to really see it before she started driving, no other cars would have approached it at the right angle to do that kind of damage, and she _had_ been in the shops for a fair amount of time for someone to have positioned that without her noticing if they'd been quick enough...

She didn't know what was going on here for certain, but if the anxious glances Agent Booth was exchanging with the rest of his team was any indication of how dangerous this man was- she'd done some reading about Agent Booth and Doctor Brennan's lives after she'd met them, and had noted that they'd dealt with some very interesting killers over the years; anyone able to scare them like this _had_ to be dangerous-, she knew enough to know that she wanted to get her son away from danger before whatever was capable of inspiring that level of fear struck again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To answer the most obvious question, Angelus laid out the spikes while he was covered with a blanket and then he ran back to the convertible while Carol was shopping; as Carol herself thought, Huntsville's still quiet enough for him to get away with something like that without being spotted.


	19. The Fireman Without a Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: As promised, there's a plot twist or two here- to say nothing of the foreshadowing of a couple of familiar faces who should appear in person in the next chapter if all goes well- that I _really_ think you'll enjoy
> 
> 2: Reference to "The Headless Witch in the Woods", but it's generally straightforward stuff; detailed knowledge of the episode is not necessary, although there will be some minor spoilers

"Well," Cam said, smiling slightly over at Booth as they drove back to his flat after they'd left the Grants at the Hoover building- Cullen was already looking into finding somewhere safe for the Grants to stay until this crisis was over, even if the sceptical look on his face made it clear that he doubted things were going to be as simple as Booth was trying to claim they would be-, "at least that worked out, right?"

"Yeah, tell me about it; we got the clue in time to solve it, _and_ we managed to save the victims _before_ something nasty happened," Angela said, smiling over at Booth in obvious relief. "I gotta say, after spending so long dealing with the 'after' result of murders, it's nice to be able to-"

"It was too easy," Booth said, as he started the engine and began to take the SUV back to his apartment.

"Huh?" Angela asked, looking at him in confusion even as her friends did the same. "We just stopped Angelus doing _serious_ damage at least to Andy's family-"

"A car crash might be a direct way of getting the job done, and I don't deny that it's fatal under the right circumstances, but it's too simple; Angelus would never try something that basic to hurt someone," Booth said grimly. "The whole point of murder to him is the art of it, so even if he kills someone simply he has to make a show of it, like this time he killed a woman by breaking her neck; he went on to lay her out in her lover's bed before setting up the guy's apartment to give the impression that she'd set up a romantic evening for her partner before the guy came into his bedroom and found her corpse."

The memory of what Angelus had done to Jenny Calendar just for trying to save him might hurt, but at least the story made his point for him; everyone around him was clearly too shocked by the story he'd just told to ask for further details.

"OK, is it too wrong for me to say that your other self is _really_ disturbing?" Hodgins asked, looking with a slightly queasy expression at Booth.

"Trust me, you wouldn't be the first one to question his stability; even for a vampire, Angelus was always regarded as one of the worst examples of his kind," Booth said, before he sighed and shook his head as though trying to drive away those memories. "The point is, that whole thing with the car was just too amateurish for Angelus; he wouldn't try something that simple to kill someone unless he didn't have the time to try something else, and that clue was far too straightforward for me to believe that he honestly thought we'd take _any_ time to crack that."

"So... you're saying that Angelus _let_ us save Andy?" Bones said, looking uncertainly at Booth. "Why would he... I mean, if he likes killing people...?"

"He likes to make it a game, and I'm the best mortal opponent he's had in years- a guy who knows how he thinks just as he knows how I think-; he's going to want to draw it out as long as possible, giving me some little victories so that his final one's all the sweeter," Booth said grimly, as he turned around another corner. "Everyone he encountered during my first century and a half only 'knew' him if he assumed some kind of fake identity- seducing a maid to get access to a lord's house, that kind of thing-, and even after I lost my soul, most of his enemies only had second-hand records of his past experiences to draw on rather than previous experience; Cordelia was probably the only exception, and she was possessed at the time-"

"Possessed?" Bones repeated, looking sharply over at him. "By what?"

"That higher power I told you about who was going to bring about world peace at the cost of free will," Booth replied. "Long story short, the thing had to hi-jack Cordelia's body to manifest in our dimension at first- coming down on its own would have attracted too much attention, but it was able to slip through the cracks by using Cordelia to give birth to a new body for itself-, so it spent some time posing as her to trick my team into releasing Angelus because we thought he might have some information I didn't have; another long story I'll explain later..."

He shook his head in frustration, realising that he was going off on an overly-long tangent. "God, I'm starting to sound like Willow..."

"Willow?" Angela asked.

"Buffy's best friend back in the old days, as well as the gang's resident tech-whiz and witch," Booth explained, smiling slightly at the memory of the shy young redhead a part of him had considered his closest friend in the old gang after Buffy before he'd relocated to Los Angeles. "She had a tendency to... well, despite her shyness, she tended to talk a lot."

"A shy genius?" Cam said with a slight smile. "Must have been a shift going from that to us?"

"The transition took a bit longer than that, but yeah; you guys are definitely a _lot_ more confident than any of the smart guys I knew back then," Booth confirmed, nodding in agreement at Cam's point, briefly lost in a smile at the memories of those old days- it might not have been an immediate transition from the likes of Willow, Wesley and Fred to the current squint squad, but it _had_ been a change-, before he turned around onto the street where his apartment was located and began to slow down, his eyes swiftly taking in the subtly-worrying scene before him. "Hold on a minute..."

"What?" Bones asked, before she followed the direction of his gaze and realised what he was looking at; the agents who'd been standing on guard outside of his building earlier weren't there any more, and there was no sign of anyone standing around the area who could have been them keeping a more discreet eye on things (Not that they'd have bothered with that, anyway; since they were dealing with a serial killer, discretion was foregone in favour of creating an intimidating presence).

"Uh... am I the only one suddenly wondering where those agents went?" Hodgins asked, looking slightly apprehensively over at Booth. "I mean, I get that I'm the first guy to cry 'conspiracy', but even this is taking things a _bit_ far; there's no way they'd _all_ abandon one of their own who's being hunted by a deranged psychopath... right?"

"Oh, _damnit_..." Booth said, subtly accelerating his car so that he could park in front of the building, quickly realising what Angelus had really been after in the first place. "He wasn't seriously _trying_ to kill Andy; all he wanted to do was create a situation that would get us out of the city for a few hours..."

"At a point when the sunlight is at such an angle that the streets outside your building are in the shade!" Bones said, looking at him with renewed horror as she realised the implications of the empty street in front of them.

The sun might just be setting now, but if they were right, someone could have gained access to Booth's apartment building while they were occupied with relative impunity...

"But... look, they still wouldn't be able to get _into_ the place, right?" Hodgins asked, the awkwardly-hopeful smile on his face that seemed to have become a permanent fixture since the supernatural entered his world-view. "You said yourself that vampires can't enter private residences without an invitation-"

"As I've said before, that doesn't mean someone couldn't kick the door down and force everyone out; add in the fact that these agents were instructed to look out for a guy who looked like me because I _stupidly_ assumed that Angelus would prefer to act alone..." Booth said, cursing as he slammed his hand against the wheel. " _Damnit_!"

"It's not your fault, Booth," Bones said, reaching over to place a hand on his shoulder as she stared earnestly at him. "Angelus knows how you think as well as you know how he thinks; it's only natural that you'll sometimes slip up-"

"I _can't_ slip up on this, Bones; people are _dying_ because of me!" Booth said, glaring over at her before he got out of the car and hurried into the building, leaving the team to follow him up the stairs as quickly as possible.

As he arrived back at his flat, for a moment Booth had hope when he found his door shut and locked, but then he opened the door and that fragile hope was dashed; the window that had been shattered earlier might still be boarded over, but the agents lying around the room were clearly _not_ simply taking a break, even if their pale skin and bloodstained necks didn't make it obvious.

The only exception to the 'rule' of the various bodies lying in the room, the rest of whom were professionally dressed agents, was a man dressed in clothes that looked like they were a few sizes off what he would have worn on his own, as though someone had grabbed what they could for him without confirming his size; the sleeves of his shirt were slightly too short and his trousers were so baggy that they almost covered his feet. However, the most distinctive thing about him was the fact that at least half the skin on his face appeared to have been torn off, his cheeks all but completely gone along with one eye, although bizarrely enough the rest of the body didn't seem to have sustained much damage.

"Cam?" Booth said, his gaze flicking to the pathologist.

"On it," Cam said, walking over to crouch down beside the partially-faceless body, studying it for a few moments before she winced. "Oh, that's disgusting..."

"What?" Angela asked.

"Based on the indentations, it looks like someone... _scratched_ his face off," Cam replied, looking back at the rest of the team.

"Scratched?" Hodgins repeated, unable to stop himself from shuddering slightly as he looked at the body in front of them. "As in, someone did _that_ with their bare hands?"

"The nails would have been far longer than the average person's, but yeah, hands would have been the weapon of choice for this killer, yeah," Cam said, shaking her head as she continued to study the victim. "It looks like he died when his throat was slit by a short blade of some sort, but it's hard to tell when the facial damage occurred; judging by the amount of blood, it could have occurred immediately pre- or post-mortum, if the killer was quick enough..."

"Oh my God..." Bones said, her eyes widening as she walked over to take a closer look at the body.

"What?" Cam asked, looking over at the anthropologist as the other woman carefully studied the remains of the face in front of her for a few more moments before looking back at the rest of the team.

"I can't be certain, of course- it's been over three years since I saw him and we only spent a few days in contact with him, and that's without allowing for the damage he's sustained-, but, from what I can see..." Bones said, swallowing slightly as she turned to look more directly at Booth. "I think this is Will."

"Will?" Booth repeated, pausing for a moment before his eyes widened in realisation. "Hold on; Will Hastings? That guy who killed his brother and blamed it on that witch's ghost?"

"Yeah, as long as we're talking about that-" Hodgins asked, looking curiously at the ex-vampire.

"Possession doesn't work like that, Hodgins; if Maggie Saunders had made Will do anything, he wouldn't have been able to remember hitting his brother as clearly as he did," Booth said, shaking his head dismissively at the entomologist. "Trust me, I speak from experience; if Maggie _had_ been in control, Will wouldn't even have remembered doing anything, and he _definitely_ wouldn't have actually heard her talking to him at any point."

"Experience?" Angela said, looking at him in surprise, clearly grateful for the chance to think about something other than the mutilated body in front of them. "You mean _you've_ been possessed?"

"Well... Angelus was once possessed by a teacher at Buffy's old school- she and her lover were reliving their last moments alive because the lover wanted forgiveness for his mistake-, but-" Booth began.

"Back a minute; _she_?" Hodgins said, looking at Booth with a broad grin; it might have partly been because he did't want to think too much about the sight in front of them, but Booth could clearly tell that Hodgins still found the idea of the news they'd just heard to be rather amusing. "You were possessed by a _woman_?"

"As I just said, I don't really remember it, and this isn't the time for that; can we _focus_ , please?" Booth said, indicating the body in his couch. "What's important right now is working out how the hell this guy got out of the asylum he was left in after we arrested him, what he's doing here, and what kind of message Angelus is trying to send; he wouldn't go to the trouble of getting Will out without a reason."

"You know, technically this guy _is_ you; shouldn't you be able to tell us-?" Cam asked.

"Look, what do you want from me, huh?" Booth asked, staring in exasperation over at Cam; he knew that it was unfair the moment he started talking, but after everything he'd been through over the last few days, he felt that he was entitled to a quick vent. "I might know Angelus, but this situation is ridiculously unprecedented; I've always understood what he did because I remember the thought process that led him to do it, but that doesn't mean I can predict what he's _going_ to do in a situation like this! He knows about so many of our past cases that it would be _ridiculous_ to expect me to pick out who he's likely to go after next; for all I know, he could decide to go after Heather Taffet to kill her the way I'd like to, he could go with the idea that Doctor Landis deserves to die for being so blasé about his fiancé's death, he might think that stalking Kat Curtis would be a neat way to remind me of the fact that I remember killing my _family_ -!"

"Actually," Angela said, looking apprehensively up from the table where she'd just been studying the papers laid out across it, "I _think_ he left us a clue after all... since I assume you're not planning to submit yourself for psychiatric evaluation?"

"What?" Booth asked, turning around to look sharply at the artist, walking over to take the offered paper from her hands, glancing over it for a few moments before he swallowed and looked back at the team. "This is bad."

"What?" Hodgins asked, his own apprehension growing as he took in the expression on Booth's face. "How bad could it be?"

"This is a registration paper to commit a patient to psychiatric evaluation at the McKinley Psychiatric Hospital," Booth explained, almost feeling his own blood run cold at the news he was revealing to his friends.

He didn't even need to finish his sentence; all of the people knew who they knew at that particular asylum.

"Hold on; Angelus is going after _Zach_?" Cam said, looking over at Booth in confusion. "I thought you said this guy was a sociopath who didn't get-"

"Not understanding something isn't the same as ignoring it," Booth interrupted. "Angelus might not get _why_ we'd still care about Zach after... what he did... but that doesn't mean he couldn't use it."

"But how could anyone get _into_ this apartment?" Angela said, indicating the boarded-up window. "You said yourself that vampires can't get into private residences without an invitation- even Angelus can't get in here, and he's _you_ -; the bodies could have been thrown in, but this paper's _way_ too neatly laid-out for him to have done that, and I just can't see even the _evil_ you tearing someone's face off with your crazy-sharp nails-!"

"Crazy," Booth repeated, horror dawning on his face as he looked around at the squints, before he turned around and walked out of the room to punch the wall just outside his door with a roar of rage, his fist nearly denting the plaster outside the apartment.

"What the...?" Hodgins asked, hurrying out after Booth along with the rest of the team to look anxiously at their friend.

"I know who did this," Booth said, turning back to look at the squints even as he slightly massaged his now-bruised fist. "Her name's Drusilla, and she was Angelus's greatest triumph as a vampire."


	20. The Truth of the Apprentice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare for the big finale; this chapter's a bit of a filler, but I have big plans for the next one, for reasons you'll see at the end...

"Drusilla?" Angela repeated, looking uncertainly at Booth, clearly surprised at the addition of a new name in the current situation. "Have you... mentioned her?"

"I haven't," Booth said, looking grimly around at his team. "She was Angelus's greatest triumph when he was active, serving as both his greatest victim and his greatest creation."

"He... sired her?" Hodgins asked, clearly trying to establish if he was using the right term for a situation that he couldn't have imagined existed only a few days ago.

"After a _long_ period of torment," Booth said, nodding briefly to confirm Hodgins' use of the right term, pausing for a moment to come to a decision before he continued; if Drusilla was back, his friends deserved to know everything. "She first drew Angelus's attention because she could see the future-"

"She could see the future?" Bones repeated, the initial automatic scepticism of that concept being quickly replaced with curiosity; clearly, her current encounters with the supernatural had left her more open to the possibility of those kind of powers existing than she had before.

"It was mainly just vague ideas at first- dreams about mining accidents before they happened, things like that-, but at the time that was enough to leave her convinced that she had been cursed by the Devil," Booth explained; even if recent events had helped him draw a line between what he had done and what Angelus had done, it still wasn't easy to remember these experiences. "Angelus drove her even further over the edge by posing as a priest and taking her confessions, encouraging her to accept the 'evil' within her during their conversations and killing her family and possible fiancé based on what she told him; she didn't know that it was her 'priest' doing it, of course, but that's still going to be a lot to deal with."

"Oh God..." Cam said, shaking her head in weak denial at the story she was hearing, her horror at the explanation she was hearing clear on her face.

"When she fled to a nunnery," Booth continued solemnly- he'd started this explanation, and so he was going to finish it, no matter how difficult it was to actually share a detailed example of the kind of monster he'd been back in the day-, "Angelus followed her, and, on the day he took her vows, he slaughtered most of the nuns and then had sex with Darla right in front of Drusilla before turning her; her resulting insanity would serve as a permanent monument to Angelus's skill at destroying a person, while her visions would also be useful even if they'd be... a bit hard to interpret at times."

"The fact that she's nuts makes it hard to know when she's just whacko and when she's saying something relevant, huh?" Hodgins asked, the smile on his face so weak that anybody would have known that he didn't mean it.

"It's pretty much the same as most contemporary ideas about visions of the future; sometimes context is more important than anything, particularly if you don't know what she's talking about in the first place," Booth confirmed. "Sometimes what she's saying only makes sense when some parts of it have already happened, and the fact that she's mad makes it more difficult to be sure what she's referring to anyway, but that just makes her more dangerous as an opponent; very hard to predict what she's going to do in a situation, if nothing else."

"So... does the fact that it's her help you work out what happened here?" Cam asked, looking uncertainly at him. "I mean, if she's... Angelus's 'greatest achievement' like you said she was, I can see how it makes sense that he'd bring her in to help him on something like this- you're the guy he hates the most, Dru's probably a hard topic for you, that kind of thing-, but that doesn't explain how she got into the flat given the invitation rule..."

"She had some degree of minor hypnosis, but even the basic stuff she could do would be enough in a situation like this; all she'd have to do is make eye contact and get someone to let her in- given that I invited them to remain here until this is sorted out they could be argued to have 'squatter's rights'-, and it's pretty straightforward from there," Booth said, shaking his head grimly as he studied the bodies around him before his gaze settled on Will's corpse. "As for Hastings... she could probably stage a break-out earlier in the day and keep him under wraps until she brought him here; it's not like there aren't a few places in the area where she could have kept him, after all..."

"OK, so we know who we're dealing with and who she's after; the only question now is what she'll do once she gets there," Angela said, looking over at Booth with a slight hesitation in her manner that helped him deduce what she was about to ask him before she even said. "That... hypnosis stuff of hers... could she use it to-?"

"Make Zach try and kill us?" Booth finished for her, shaking his head firmly. "Not only is her control not that great, but Zach couldn't kill anyone if his life depended on it-"

It was only after Booth said those words that he realised that he meant them.

He might have thought about the sheer implausibility of the idea of Zach committing murder, but it was only when he was reacting automatically that he admitted the truth to himself; even before that dream he'd had after his tumour was removed, he'd never _entirely_ accepted the idea that Zach was capable of killing someone...

"What do you mean, Zach couldn't kill anyone?" Bones asked, looking at him with sudden scepticism. "He confessed-"

"I don't care what he said, Bones; I've known hundreds of killers in my time- from both sides of the law, to boot; I've worked with some of them and killed most of the others-, and Zach doesn't fit _any_ kind of profile that would have allowed him to kill someone in the manner that he allegedly killed that lobbyist," Booth said, looking firmly at his partner; he might be extremely uncomfortable talking about this kind of thing with her on behalf of someone who wasn't here to make his own contribution to the conversation, but knowing how stubborn Bones could be, she wouldn't just let this matter drop now that he'd brought it up, and he was fairly sure that they still had some time to get to the asylum to rescue Zach (Angelus wouldn't have given Dru that kind of 'assignment' unless he was sure she knew what to do, and she was far too unstable to get someone out of a place like that without help).

The cold stare on Bones's face in response to that statement was all he needed to confirm that she and the rest of the team were reacting to that news in the worst possible way; why, if he'd had reason to believe that Zach hadn't killed anyone, had he not said anything?

"Look, what do you want me to have done, huh?" he said, looking in frustration back at the anthropologist and her team, unsurprised to see the same critical glares on their faces. "All I had to go on was a hunch based on intuition acquired from a time of my life that doesn't officially exist; after Zach confessed, there wasn't really much that I could do to get him out-"

"You could have said _something_ -!" Hodgins began, staring indignantly at Booth.

"If Zach wanted to say things that would get him sent to the asylum, that's his decision; do you want to _force_ him to get over things or something?" Booth asked, glaring over at Hodgins. "Hell, back when I was Angel, I once tried to help a girl who tried to kill me, and she decided that the best way to get past what she'd done would be to spend time in prison for a murder charge when at least one case amounted to manslaughter; sometimes, even if we don't agree with what they're doing, we have to let people _choose_ their paths to redemption-"

"He's been sentenced to a _nuthouse_ -!" Hodgins protested.

"Because _he_ told the investigators responsible for questioning him the story that got him sentenced there; since Zach clearly _wants_ to be there- he's socially inept, but he's not stupid enough to have done something like _that_ by accident-, I figured that it was better to leave it alone so that he could recover from what he'd done the way _he_ wanted!" Booth countered, walking over to glare at the entomologist. "You think I didn't think about trying to protest? You think I _wanted_ to see that overly-detailed goof get locked away for probably the rest of his life because of some charismatic man-eater? Look, Hodgins, if there was anything I could have done to get Zach out _and_ help him cope with what he'd done, I would've, but I couldn't; after what he'd done, the guy needs to be in a position to forgive _himself_ before he'll accept forgiveness or absolution from others, and getting locked up is the only way he's going to get something like that-"

"OK, as... bizarrely uplifting as it is to know that the member of our group with the most experience with killers doesn't think Zach's one, can we just... focus on rescuing him right now?" Angela asked, looking between Booth and Hodgins with an awkwardness that made it clear she wanted to pursue this discussion later even if Angelus's potentially imminent attack had to take priority.

"Right," Booth said, walking over to his closet, his mind fixed on some of the contents he'd kept there in the event of a vampire incursion to Washington; even if Angelus was expecting him to use these things, he wasn't going into a situation where Zach was at stake and Drusilla was involved without taking every possible precaution. "If we're doing this, you guys are going to need a _bit_ more firepower than those tasers..."

* * *

  
As she walked through the halls of the hospital where her Daddy had told her to go, Drusilla tried to restrain the urge to skip through the halls; it was such a good time to be herself that she wished she could share that joy with the future meal accompanying her and Daddy towards what they thought would be her new room.

As comfortable as it looked like this place would be, she had to be obedient if things were going to work out; Daddy had promised her that she could have a new brother if she did what he told her to do, and she was going to ensure that Daddy had no reason to go back on his promise.

She had been so excited when Daddy had visited her after so long missing from her dreams, and to learn that the naughty soul had been taken from Daddy and left in its own new body made things even more exciting; the chance to punish the soul for taking Daddy away without having to risk losing Daddy was the most exciting news Dru had received since the news that she would be a Mummy to her Grandmummy...

She might still miss her white knight, but with Daddy back in her life, and her new brother soon to become part of her family, she would have a means to fill the void soon enough; the family she'd been searching for ever since Spike ran off to be with the bad Slayer would be hers once again...

"Hold on a minute," Daddy said, halting the doctors as he looked thoughtfully up another corridor; the clothing he wore seemed strange, although he had explained that he had to dress like the soul to get here (She was mainly looking forward to stripping it off him once the soul had moved on to its punishment for good; Daddy wanted to kill the soul himself, but she would settle for stripping away the last remnants of his presence on her Daddy's body if that was all that she was allowed to do). "Isn't this where you keep Doctor Addy?"

"Uh... yes, Agent Booth," the doctor said, looking awkwardly at Daddy as they addressed him by the soul's new name- it was like even he 'knew' that Daddy and the soul weren't the same person-, "but visiting hours are over; you can't-"

"I'm not asking you to open the door and let me in; I just... well, if I'm in the area, I wanted to see that he's doing OK," Daddy said, looking surprisingly awkward as he addressed the doctor. "You know, take a look through the window, that kind of thing..."

"Well... I suppose that wouldn't do any _harm_..." the foolish mock-healer said, looking uncertainly at her for a moment before turning around to walk down another corridor, leaving her to walk after him with her arms trapped in front of her and Daddy alongside her. As they stopped in front of a door, Drusilla looked through the small window in it and smiled at the sight of her shaggy-haired brother-to-be on the other side; his hands were as damaged as her mind, but she was sure that they could find replacements for those when he had been through the change.

"Well, there he is," the human-repairman said, turning back to look at Daddy, only for Daddy to assume his real face and bite into him, feeding off his blood until the man was beyond any help that he could have given himself.

"Glad _that's_ over with," he said, wiping his mouth before he proceeded to kick the door open as Drusilla snapped the bonds holding her hands together, leaving them both smiling casually as the former bone-doctor on the other side as he looked at them in confusion.

"Hey there, Zach," Daddy said, in a casual manner that he only used when he was about to kill the victims he'd spent a very long time with (That was the only nice thing the soul had ever done, in Drusilla's opinion; he'd done all the work establishing the foundations of relationships with so many people that Daddy could kill, allowing Daddy the maximum amount of enjoyment with relatively minimal effort). "How's things?"

"Agent Booth?" the shaggy boy said, looking at Daddy in surprise, clearly so certain that he was the soul that all other alternatives weren't worth thinking about. "Why did you break down my door... and who is this?"

"Hello, dearie," Drusilla said, smiling at the shaggy-haired boy who would be her brother looking at them in confusion. "I'm your sister in insanity, and we're here to make you my brother in blood."

The thought of what they were about to do made it all the sweeter; she hadn't had the time to really savour her dear knight's blood when she'd turned him, and Grandmummy having been a vampire before had affected her taste, but she was desperate to know if future family blood tasted sweeter when you _knew_ what it was about to become...

* * *

  
As he drove frantically towards the asylum, Booth wondered if the fact that he'd been planning to cut ties from the squints after this mess was over made it easier or harder to have Bones glaring at him like that; if she was angry at him for lying by omission about Zach, it would make it easier for her to accept his departure, but he hated the fact that they were going to end their long partnership on such a low note...

Still, in the end, it wasn't like he had a choice. Bones's whole life was based around knowing how things worked; asking her to accept vampires, demons, souls and magic into her world-view on a regular basis was asking far too much of her.

Add in the fact that they'd probably need a new psychiatrist- he had a feeling Sweets would _not_ be interested in regularly working with a guy who looked exactly like the person who'd taken his leg, even if he accepted that Angelus and Booth weren't the same person-, and it looked increasingly like Angelus was going to break the team apart even if they won...

Still, if that was what it took to keep Bones and the squints out there doing what they did best, that was what he'd have to do; right now, the undiscovered victims needed the Jeffersonian staff's skill-set more than they needed what he could contribute to this mess...

Thoughts of the future were cut off as they drew up in front of the asylum, his eyes immediately falling on the shocking familiar sight of the car that Angelus had been driving when he'd gone after the Grants.

"He's _here_?" Angela said, looking at Booth in shock.

"He must have met up with Dru on the way in and decided to head straight for the asylum; he knows we're on to him!" Booth clarified, practically throwing the door aside as he ran for the asylum, the others close behind him as he all-but-tore through the door just as alarms began to blare from inside the building.

 _Shit_ , Booth thought as he hurried towards the reception desk; if that sound didn't mean that Angelus had reached Zach's cell, he'd dip his hand into a pool of acid (In the past he would have used holy water, but that wasn't exactly an effective analogy these days).

"Agent Booth?" the receptionist sitting behind the desk said, looking at him in surprise that made what had happened here obvious; she'd already seen 'him' come in and was confused about why she hadn't seen him go out. "Didn't you just-?"

"Long story that this isn't the time for; just call the security teams and put them on high alert, you've got a couple of serial killers in the building and they're going after Doctor Addy," Booth said, flashing his ID- he'd worry about how Angelus had made it in without that earlier; since forgery wasn't a skill he'd picked up before now, and he doubted it was something Angelus would have bothered to learn, he'd probably just stolen an ID badge from an agent and figured that it would pass casual inspection if he covered the face- as he indicated the squints. "We're going after them; tell all the staff to converge on the wing where you're keeping Doctor Addy, but don't let anyone in, and if I come out of there with anything less than four people, ensure that I have a _damn_ good explanation before you let me go anywhere."

Even as he led his team on what may be their last desperate race against time towards the wing where Zach was probably destined to spend the rest of his life- regardless of how the next few minutes played out-, Booth wished that he could do more for everyone in this building than pray for their chances; he was about to face Angelus in close quarters, with Drusilla reunited with her 'daddy', when Angelus had a hostage that they'd all _prefer_ remain alive, and his only back-up was a bunch of scientists carrying weapons that most of them didn't really know how to use properly against a foe that they'd yet to _really_ face in action...

He'd done everything he could to prepare the squints for what they were about to face, but nothing could really prepare you for the challenge of fighting a vampire until you were actually there; all he could do now was hope that they were all going to get out of this alive...

Then he practically crashed through the last door between them and their destination to find Angelus and Drusilla standing in front of them, Angelus's hands around Zach's neck in a manner that would make it all too easy for him to snap it, and fears and doubts were pushed aside as he drew his gun and aimed it at his demonic alter-ego.

Right now, all that mattered was confidence; this situation would end with one of them dead no matter what happened, but it was _not_ going to be Booth if he could help it.


	21. The Battle of the Mental Hospital

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, the last battle of Angel/Booth VS Angelus; hope it lives up to expectations

"Well well, look who's here," Angelus said, grinning nonchalantly at the group who'd just charged into the asylum wing where he had taken up at least temporary residence. "It's the squint squad and our resident hard-headed investigator."

"And it's the basket-case, the psychopath, and the doctor; we're all in places that we shouldn't be," Booth said, his gun trained on what he could see of Angelus from his current position- the suit he was wearing even looked a bit like the one Booth was wearing, although the tie he'd chosen was a darker colour than anything Booth might have chosen- before he glanced anxiously at the young man who'd once been the Jeffersonian grad student. "Hey, Zach; how's things?"

"As well as could be expected for someone in my position," Zach replied, swallowing slightly around the tight grip that Angelus currently had on his throat, even as he looked at Booth in obvious confusion. "Uh..."

"Yes, Zach, you're being held hostage by my doppelganger; it's a long story that this _really_ isn't the time to share right now, OK?" Booth said, glaring briefly at the young man before he refocused his attention on Angelus. "I don't suppose you're prepared to let him go?"

"Well, let's see; two against five, all of you armed with long-range weapons that I'm _sure_ will be prepared to cope with something like me, and me stuck in a building that's designed not to let people out..." Angelus said, glancing at his surroundings as though trying to come to a decision before he shook his head. "Nah, I'll keep Zachy-boy here; nice bit of insurance, you know?"

"Do you _really_ think you're going to get out of this?" Cam asked, her gaze as cold as ice as she glared at the monster that wore the face of one of her closest friends. "We've got the security teams on their way-"

"Oh, _good_ ," Drusilla said, flexing her fingers as she smiled over at Cam, somehow still appearing attractive even when dressed in a relatively tattered outfit with damaged straps dangling from her wrist (Booth guessed that Angelus had claimed that he was bringing her in for treatment after finding her somewhere). "I need a nice bath."

"Bath?" Hodgins repeated, his instinctively questioning nature causing him to momentarily forget who he was talking to. "What are you- oh."

"Can I just say that is _gross_?" Angela asked, trying to shakily keep her own weapon focused on the more exposed target of Drusilla while still paying some degree of attention to Zach; she was doing her best, but weapons weren't something Angela had any real experience with.

"Miss Bathory recommended that mixture for its youthful properties; I just want to try it for myself," Drusilla said, shrugging nonchalantly as she continued to smile at the group before her. "And you're all the soul's new family?"

"If you want to think of us that way, sure thing, you raving nut," Angela said, her attempt at a cold stare let down by her inability to keep the gun focused on a specific point as she stared back at Drusilla. "I'd recommend you get a tan, but that wouldn't be healthy for you, would it?"

"She's funny, Daddy," Drusila said, chuckling slightly as she glanced over at Angelus. "Can we keep her?"

"Nice idea, but as good as she tastes, she'd be more trouble than she's worth, really-" Angelus began with an apologetic shrug that suggested he was simply explaining to his child why she couldn't have a puppy.

"And Zach isn't?" Booth interrupted, raising his eyebrows as he looked at his vampire counterpart. "You know as well as I do how smart the guy is- over 160, last time I checked-; given the way the demon corrupts everything, do you _really_ think he's going to just _listen_ to you when you turn him?"

"Well, it's not like I was going to get to the good stuff immediately; do you really think that little of me?" Angelus asked, shrugging slightly as he continued to keep a grip on Zach's throat. "I was thinking of a bit of torture first, establish the pecking order- too bad about his hands, really; extremities always make a good starting point if you know what you're doing..."

His voice trailed off as he noticed Booth's shoulders shaking as the FBI agent fought down a smile as he let out a low laugh, his face giving the impression that only the tense nature of the current situation was preventing him from simply breaking down laughing.

"What?" the vampire said, looking sceptically at him, clearly put out at his soul's apparent lack of respect for him. "What could _possibly_ be funny about this?"

"Oh, nothing much," Booth replied, seemingly regaining control of himself as he looked at Angelus with renewed satisfaction. "Just how much you _haven't_ changed since the last time you got out... and how much _I_ haven't changed since you left me."

"What?" Angelus said, moving Sweets to the side so that he could better address Booth; his head might be more visible now, but the way he still held on to Zach made it clear that he could at least wound the former Jeffersonian grad student before anyone could get Zach to safety. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"You coming back was the worst thing you could have done, Angelus," Booth elaborated, smiling slightly as he addressed the vampire; it was a bit of a stretch, but anything that would give him the chance to even momentarily play Angelus at his own game would be enjoyable right now. "There's always been a part of me that wondered how much of you was me... how much of an impact whatever part of you was left in me influenced the way I did things, how much of the way you saw things influenced the way I see them while you were hanging around in the back of my skull... And here you are, as ruthless and psychotic as ever... and not only am I not contributing a goddamn _thing_ that you didn't pick up before I even knew you were here, your absence hasn't made a _single_ difference to the way I act."

"What?" Angelus said, looking at his human alter ego in confusion, clearly confused about why his other self was going off on such an irrelevant line of discussion.

"Ever since I Shanshued, there's always been a part of me that wondered whether you were still going to have some impact on my behaviour," Booth elaborated, his fingers tight around his gun as he continued to glare at the being he hated more than anything else. "There's always been a part of me that felt like you were so close to the surface when I threatened Thomas Vega, when I killed Gormogon, when Epps died... and here you are, completely separate from me, completely unable to have _any_ impact on me, and the only thing that's really _changed_ about me since the tumour got taken out was a bit of memory-loss of the events around the operation, a slight tweaking of minor personal habits that are barely worth considering- apparently I start going upstairs with a different foot, and who really cares about that?- and a lack of coulrophobia; I think Bones can confirm I haven't really suffered anywhere else?"

"No," Bones confirmed, shaking her head as she looked over at Angelus. "That issue aside, Booth's just as capable as he ever was; you might be a separate identity now, Angelus, but there is _nothing_ about you that contributed to who Booth is as a person."

"And you think that takes away from the fact that you _created_ me?" Angelus asked, staring back at Booth with a colder stare. "I'm still the product of what was in there-"

"I've always accepted that part of myself even if I didn't entirely like it, Angelus; there's a difference between accepting that the potential to be like you is there and wondering if what you are now that you exist having an undue amount of influence on my behaviour," Booth interrupted, still staring resolutely at his foe. "But by coming back like this, you've answered all my questions to my satisfaction... which means that the only thing left to do is kill you."

"That's not going to happen, you naughty jailer," Drusilla said, shaking her head scoldingly at Booth. "You're not going to chain Daddy up again, and you're _definitely_ not going to kill him while my brother-to-be's in his hands-"

"Zach!" Bones yelled, clearly fed up with this conversation (Booth didn't even bother protesting; he'd said his piece, and right now all he wanted was for all humans to get to safety and for Angelus to die at last). "Hit him in the quadratus femoris!"

Before anyone else had a chance to react, Zach rammed the mangled remains of his hand into Angelus's chest, the surprise of the blow more than anything else prompting Angelus to release his grip on Zach. Drusilla screamed in rage and moved towards the young anthropologist, but Hodgins and Angela had already opened fire, their bullets striking Drusilla and leaving her screaming in pain as she clutched at her arm, smoke rising from the arm as it burned where the bullet had entered her flesh, giving Brennan time to dash forward and practically yank Zach to safety as Booth refocused his gun on Angelus's head.

"Wooden bullets with holy water inside them; dangerous to you on _every_ level," the agent said, his gaze steady as he met his other self's eyes. "We both know how good a shot I am, Angelus; do you really think you can get away before I hit you _somewhere_?"

"Probably not," Angelus said, shrugging in an almost indifferent manner as he looked at Booth, before a smug smile spread across his face. "Unless, of course, I do _this_!"

Booth barely had time to react before Angelus apparently fell backwards, realising too late that Angelus had turned his fall into a slide forward that resulted in him hitting Booth in the legs before he could adjust his aim. As the impact knocked him off his feet, Booth found himself falling forwards to land on top of Angelus, quickly initiating a roll as the struggle resumed, raw strength and training suddenly forgotten in the desperation of trying to stop the other getting back to their feet.

* * *

  
As Drusilla moved towards the two doppelgangers as Booth and Angelus struggled on the ground, Brennan was satisfied to note that she wasn't the only one to start firing; the rest of her team at the Jeffersonian joined her in unleashing a barrage of bullets at the dark-haired vampire. Most of the bullets only skimmed past the vampire, but even the simple flesh-wounds left Drusilla smoking in an obviously painful manner, which was made even worse by the bullets that managed to strike her more directly and remained in her body, fire and smoke spreading from the points of impact to the rest of her.

Even as Drusilla turned to confront her attackers, she let out a strangled scream before collapsing into ash, prompting the two combatants currently struggling on the ground to pause and look in the direction of the sound, long enough for Brennan to grab the fighter currently on top by the collar and haul him away from his opponent. She only just had time to register the neutral black tie that the doppelganger below her was wearing before the 'Booth' that was really Angelus had leapt to his feet and wrapped his arms around her, spinning her around to face the others before anyone else could get her to safety.

"BREN!" Angela screamed, aiming her gun at the vampire before Hodgins grabbed her wrist.

"NO!" he said, looking urgently at the artist. "He's too close; you could hit Doctor B.!"

"Good call, Hodgy," Angelus said, chuckling briefly at the entomologist before he turned his attention back to Brennan, apparently unconcerned about the group that was once again assembled in front of him- Booth back on his feet and a confused Zach behind the other four as they aimed their guns at Angelus-, leaning in to whisper into Brennan's ear, the stench of decay mingling in with the perversion of the natural scent that Brennan hadn't even registered was so unique to Booth, rendered even more unnerving by the fact that Booth was now staring in horror at her current state of captivity along with the rest of her team. "I actually prefer it this way; gives us a chance to talk about that little issue of you pushing people away when they get close that we started a while ago..."

Brennan felt him shrug behind her, even as the rest of her attention remained focused on the sight of her team as they aimed their weapons at the two of them, desperately seeking an opportunity to fire that wouldn't hurt her in the process.

"I have to remind you," Angelus continued, as though they were just having a casual conversation over a coffee rather than currently being trapped in a position where a simple twitch of Angelus's hand could kill her, "you never answered my question the first time _we_ met; do you keep pushing him to see how much he can take to decide if he's worth it, or just because you want to provoke him into leaving you so that you can tell yourself he's just another person who failed you?"

"I don't-" Brennan began- she refused to have this conversation in front of the rest of her team, even if it wasn't _extremely_ uncomfortable-, only to be cut off as Angelus tightened his grip around her throat.

"Y'know, you really should stop lying to yourself like that; you're a complete screw-up and that's all there is to it, OK?" Angelus said, letting out a sarcastic smirk that reminded Brennan of her original description of Angelus as 'Booth-Epps'; that kind of laugh was more appropriate for the voice of a serial killer like Epps, but it just felt _wrong_ when Booth's voice was the one making it. "The guy might have screwed up most of his relationships, but they always only fell apart because of outside circumstances that he had no goddamn hope of controlling; he didn't like what Darla wanted him to be- and most of those feelings were just because he got them from me-, his curse drove him away from Buff, and Cordelia went and got herself hi-jacked by a higher power when he was about to confess-"

"Shut _up_ -!" Booth began, moving forward as though about to try and physically attack the vampire behind her before Cam's hand on his arm brought him back to his senses.

"Oh, c'mon, you've always recognised my honest in the past; just because you don't _want_ to share this doesn't mean I'm lying," Angelus said, grinning as he looked in satisfaction at Booth before turning his attention back to Brennan. "How does it feel to know that you're such a screw-up you've been driving away the only guy who could be _guaranteed_ to always be there for you?"

"Right now..." Brennan said, reaching into her pocket to pull out something that she'd picked up earlier. "All I'm focusing on feeling... is satisfaction... at stopping _you_."

Before Angelus could react to that statement, Brennan had raised her hand to slap it against Angelus's cheek, and was instantly rewarded with a scream of rage and the smell of burning flesh, smoke rising from Angelus's face as his grip on her suddenly lessened, allowing her to dive to the ground and away from the vampire. Refusing to allow Angelus any time to recover his senses, Booth lunged past and rammed the stake in his hands into Angelus's heart, the vampire and the man staring at each other for a moment before Angelus collapsed into ash, leaving the six Jeffersonian staff members staring at where he had been.

 _It's over_ , Brennan thought after a rare moment of mental silence.

After everything that Angelus had done to them, it almost seemed impossible to believe that his reign of terror could have ended so abruptly, but they'd all seen him die with their own eyes; a killer over two centuries old had been eliminated, and there was a very low probability of anything else bringing him back now.

"What was that?" Zach asked at last, breaking the physical silence that had settled over the ward.

"Trust me, man, you _don't_ want to know," Hodgins said, shaking his head as he looked over at his old friend.

Brennan didn't bother to say anything herself; Zach could imagine whatever he liked to account for what had just taken place.

Even if Booth was right and Zach hadn't actually _killed_ anyone while serving as Gormoggon's apprentice, the fact that he'd fallen victim to Gormoggon's manipulations in the first place didn't leave her feeling entirely comfortable with the thought of telling him everything that she and the others had learned about the world in the last few days.

If Zach could rationalise everything he'd seen away as some side-effect of his treatment, that would probably be for the best...

"A crucifix?" Booth said, picking up the object that she'd held against Angelus's cheek, looking from it to her in surprise.

"Of course," Brennan replied, smiling slightly back at him, grateful for something to take her mind off what they would or wouldn't tell Zach. "You said that they worked as a deterrent against vampires."

"But... you've never believed in that kind of thing..." Booth said, still looking between her and the crucifix in confusion.

"I don't," Brennan replied, looking back at Booth with a small but sincere smile. "But I'll always believe in you."

It was only after those words had passed her lips that she realised the full, personal implications of what she'd just said.

Regardless of Angelus's taunts and accusations, even if Booth had lied to her about various crucial details in his past and had once lived in a world of magic and demons that defied virtually everything that she knew about the natural world, even if the threat they faced in this case had technically come from Booth himself...

She would _always_ believe in him to do everything in his power to protect her.

"So..." Angela asked, looking uncertainly at the two piles of ash that was all that remained of the vampires who had tried to kill them earlier, "does anyone know what kind of story we're going to use to explain where these guys went?"

"Fake a break-out?" Hodgins suggested, shrugging slightly as he looked around at the others. "It's a stretch, but we're _just_ about high enough so that someone could theoretically jump out the window and be able to walk away with relatively minimal injuries if they knew what they were doing; we could say someone was waiting for them in a truck or something..."

"That'll do for a start; we can talk with Cullen in the morning and straighten out the fine details then," Booth said, wincing as he put his gun back into his holster and wiped a small cut above his eye. "Right now, I just want to go back to my apartment, and get a few good hours of sleep..."

"Amen to _that_ ," Angela confirmed, nodding in agreement at Booth before looking over at Brennan in a manner that made it obvious she wouldn't be getting out of an awkward conversation with the artist in the not-too-distant future.

Angelus might be dead, but the topics he'd brought to the surface during his fight with them weren't going to be abandoned that easily...


	22. The Meetings in the Aftermath

As she sat in her office the morning after their final fight with Angelus, Brennan for once found herself unable to even really think of working after everything they'd experienced over the last few days.

She wasn't sure what shocked her more; the knowledge that vampires, demons, magic, and all affiliated issues actually existed, or the fact that she was just _accepting_ it.

Actually, when she thought about it, the reason she and the others were accepting it was all fairly straightforward; Booth believed it, and they all believed in Booth.

For all that he might not share their scientific insight or expertise, the rest of the staff at the Jeffersonian had learned long ago that, just as Booth shouldn't question them about their scientific insights, they shouldn't question him when it came to people and areas of the world that they couldn't analyse in the lab.

If Special Agent Seeley Booth believed that vampires, demons and magic was real, than they were real; Agent Finn and that confrontation with the First might have confirmed that there was more to the world than anything that they'd previously imagined, but even without that evidence, the fact that Booth believed that something was possible was all that they needed to at least consider the idea. Angela had already expressed some interest in learning a bit more about magic, Hodgins had expressed an interest in some of the supernatural cults that Booth had destroyed or encountered in his life, Cam was considering what Booth might have witnessed during his time as Angelus, and Brennan...

Brennan sighed slightly.

For the first time in her life, when faced with the possibility of discovering new information, she wasn't sure what she wanted to know first. While the anthropological implications of an entire society of magic and demons existing hidden from the world they knew was fascinating- even if she was fully aware that she couldn't publish a thing about it-, she couldn't help but focus on the personal implications of what had just taken place and how it would affect her interaction with others.

After assessing her fellow Jeffersonian staff members' assessments of their recent experience, Zach's reaction had been the most immediate thing she had concerned herself with. Zach appeared to be content to remain silent in the asylum once the fight had concluded and they had briefly spoken with him about recent events in their lives- Booth's tumour, Angela had mentioned her reunion with Roxie, she and Cam had mentioned re-hiring Daisy, things like that-, and the rest of them, while aware of the evidence supporting Booth's theory that Zach hadn't actually killed anyone- Brennan might not put much faith in psychology, but she recognised Booth's awareness of people, and their additional knowledge about his memories of his time as Angelus just made his insight into killers all the more relevant-, were forced to accept Booth's earlier point about the need for Zach to forgive himself even if everyone else had forgiven him. Zach hadn't asked for clarification about what he had witnessed during their confrontation with Angelus and Drusilla, and they hadn't told him anything on their own; Zach might have accepted that what had taken place had happened in reality, but he also clearly recognised that there was nothing to be gained by asking for more information about it.

The deaths caused by Angelus had been difficult to cope with- Booth in particular felt guilty that the people involved had died or been threatened simply because he'd known them-, but the fact that they'd stopped Angelus before he could kill Carol and Andy at least helped him feel less guilty as he knew that he had still managed to save the genuinely innocent, no matter how guilty he felt over Sully's death and Sweets's mutilation. With the rest of the Jeffersonian staff able to vouch for Booth's presence at the time of Sweets's abduction, and the FBI strike team that had discovered Sully's body confirming that the killer had been Booth's exact double, even those members of the FBI unaware of the supernatural aspects of the case had accepted the cover story that Angelus was a criminal Booth had convicted who had undergone plastic surgery to get revenge on Booth by framing his old enemy for his own crimes...

"Hello?" Angela said, politely knocking on the door of her office, breaking into Brennan's train of thought.

"Oh, hi," Brennan said, nodding briefly at Angela before she noticed the worried expression on the artist's face. "What's wrong?"

"Well... are you all right?" Angela asked, looking uncertainly at her as she walked into the office, closing the door behind her.

"Of course," Brennan replied. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, you _did_ just get temporarily held hostage and nearly killed by the psychopathic alter-ego and exact double of the man you've trusted to protect you for more than the past five years," Angela said, looking pointedly at her. "That'd be enough to make anyone disturbed, sweetie; we'd all understand if you need some time-"

"It's not like I ever thought that it was _Booth_ doing it; the first time I saw Angelus was when he was trying to kill Booth, so the possibility of mistaking the two of them for each other was never an issue," Brennan said, looking firmly at her friend. "I have no doubt that Booth would _never_ do anything like that to me-"

"But you're worried that he'd do _something_ to you, aren't you?" Angela said, still staring firmly at Brennan as she sat down opposite her friend.

"No, I'm not," Brennan said, shaking her head firmly at Angela. "Angela, you heard what Booth said; we can't trust Angelus-"

"He told us that Angelus would lie with the truth by telling us the truth in the worst possible interpretation of it; that's not the same thing," Angela countered, staring resolutely at her friend. "I'm not saying that Angelus was right about your reasons for doing it, but he did have a point about one thing; if you keep on trying to keep Booth at arm's length because you're scared, eventually you're just going to push him away because he thinks that you'll never feel that way about him."

"I'm _not_ -" Brennan began.

"Booth said it himself; Angelus might twist the truth, but he'd never actually _lie_ , particularly not about something like that when he thought that he was about to kill you," Angela said, looking firmly at her friend. "Sorry to be blunt, but he thought that he was about to kill you; I think it's safe to say that Angelus wasn't going to tell lies at a time like that."

For a moment, Brennan could only sit in silence as she processed what she had just heard, relating it back to the confrontation that had taken place last night, before she shook her head.

"It... it doesn't matter," she said, wishing that she sounded

"Sweetie," Angela said, looking firmly at her friend, "you can't let fear dictate your life."

"I'm _not_ -" she started to say once again.

"What's the problem here, exactly?" Angela asked, looking uncertainly at Brennan. "You've known that Booth dated before, so that isn't it; you've known that he killed people, so that's not the problem; what's-?"

"He _had_ to leave them!" Brennan said, slamming her hands on her desk in frustration as she stared at Angela, the words spilling out of her mouth before she had time to think about what she was saying. "Every relationship that he's had as Booth that I knew about ended because he _wanted_ to end it- he even made a choice to stop doing _that_ with Rebecca even if she rejected him first-; he only left Buffy and Cordelia because of the curse on his soul and because she _died_ -!"

"OK, I'm all for you accepting that something that so drastically goes against everything you knew is real, but seriously; you think _that's_ an issue?" Angela asked, looking pointedly at her friend. "Maybe he left them because he _had_ to rather than because he _wanted_ to, but does it really matter what led to him being here and now so long as he _is_ here now?"

It was one of those rare occasions where Brennan literally had no idea how to react; as much as a part of her wanted to protest that it did matter, the rest of her had to accept that Angela made an accurate argument against that idea.

"Just... ask yourself one thing," Angela said, looking at the anthropologist with a reassuring smile as she turned to walk back towards the office door. "Forgetting about the supernatural reasons he had to leave them... does it matter what chain of events led him here so long as he's here _now_?"

As Angela left the office, Brennan wished that she found the question as easy to answer as the artist apparently thought it would be.

She might be grateful for the fact that she had met Booth, but she couldn't exactly shake off that final doubt; even if Cordelia was dead, _Buffy_ was still around...

And if Booth had a chance to make a choice- particularly now that at least one person from that past knew he was still alive-, wouldn't he choose the woman who'd given him a moment of perfect happiness over the woman who'd caused him so much frustration?

* * *

  
As he sat grimly by Sweets' bedside, Booth wished that he had some kind of alternative plan available to him for dealing with this issue; it wasn't like he personally _had_ to be here, given that Cullen was already fully aware of the whole situation and had assured Booth that he'd make sure that Sweets was briefed on the fact that it hadn't been Booth who had attacked him, but Booth still felt like it was his responsibility to break the news himself.

Not only did he want to make sure that Sweets _knew_ that he and Angelus weren't the same being, even if they looked the same, but he also wanted to ensure that Sweets understood first-hand how sorry he was about this whole situation; if he was going to sever ties with the team, he wanted to make sure that they all understood why he was doing it.

It wasn't because he wanted to spare them from future attacks or anything like that; after what they'd done, he doubted that even the First would be trying anything against them any time soon. After he'd taken out Angelus, the Bringers were unlikely to want to stick around, and the First had probably expended far too much power bringing Angelus back to life for it to be any kind of threat, and he strongly doubted that the First had shared the secret of his continued survival with any other demons; Caleb and the Turok-Han proved that the First had to make a big show of using unique henchmen against its enemies where more conventional forces might do the trick.

In the end, it was the simple fact that he'd dragged them into a world that they should never have been a part of that was motivating his decision to leave; after everything they'd risked to help him defeat a foe who should never have threatened them in the first place, it was only right for him to get out of their lives while they could still hold on to their old beliefs rather than have to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew...

"Been a rough few days for you, huh?" Hodgins's voice suddenly said, prompting Booth to look up as the entomologist walked into the room, looking at Booth with a solemn manner that he rarely showed.

"Yeah," Booth replied, nodding briefly before looking back at Hodgins; he was fairly sure how Bones was going to react to his decision to leave, and he could make reasonable guesses about Cam and Angela, but Hodgins was more of a question-mark. "How about you?"

"Me?" Hodgins replied, smiling back at Booth. "I just learned that there's a whole secret society operating under our noses that nobody ever knew about; I'm _awesome_."

Despite himself, Booth chuckled at his friend's assessment of his mood; Hodgins might be a bit off at times, but it was good to know that the other man didn't seem to care about his past.

Bones's opinion might be the one that really mattered to Booth, but that didn't mean that he didn't care what the others thought of him; given that Hodgins was the team's 'secondary scientist' after Bones- Angela was an artist first, Cam's scientific skills were secondary to her own ability to lead the lab, and the interns just rotated around too often for him to have any regular contact with them as scientists (Wendell didn't 'count' as he'd bonded with the guy _outside_ the lab)-, it was a relief to hear that he was being so willing to accept this new information.

"So... the fact that I was a vampire isn't that big a deal?" he asked at last; even if he was planning to leave regardless, he didn't want to cut his ties to the group who'd come to mean so much to him over the years knowing that they hated him.

"It's a shocker, don't get me wrong, but I'll cope," Hodgins replied, smiling reassuringly at Booth. "I mean, at least you were on our side for more of the time than you weren't- and before you say anything, not killing us on a regular basis _does_ count as being on our side in my book-, and I think you said yourself last night that you are _not_ the guy who did all the stuff Angelus did."

Hodgins' body language might be slightly on edge as he spoke, but the essential statement he was making at least seemed to be honest; the other man didn't care about what he had been before he was Booth, but only who and what he was now that he _was_ Booth...

Further conversation was cut off when Sweets began to stir, his eyes slowly blinking open only to widen in shock when he saw Booth sitting on the edge of his bed.

" _You_ -!" he began, his hand automatically reaching for the nearest panic button before Hodgins grabbed his arm.

" _Don't_ ," he said, looking at the entomologist with an expression that somehow managed to at least partially combine firm with reassuring.

"Sweets," Booth said, trying to focus more on Sweets's face than the empty space where the psychiatrist's leg had been, "I know how this looks, but believe me; I _didn't_ do this to you."

"You were _there_ -!" Sweets yelled almost frantically at him.

"Not exactly," Hodgins said, looking at the psychiatrist with a firm stare, waiting until the other man was looking at him in obvious confusion before he continued speaking. "That was... well, that was Booth's doppelganger."

Sweets could only blink incredulously as he looked over at the entomologist.

"His _what_?" he said at last.

"Long story short, it was a guy from my past who had a lot of issues with me and took advantage of an opportunity to try and destroy my life," Booth said, looking directly at Sweets and crossing his fingers that the psychiatrist could see the honesty in his eyes despite his fear at the current situation. "I don't know what he said to you beforehand, but it wasn't true; Bones and Cam can confirm that we found you shortly after you... passed out... and Hodgins was there when I originally confronted the guy."

"It's true, doc," Hodgins said, nodding briefly at the other man, acknowledging him by title in a rare gesture of respect and sympathy for what the other man had gone through. "Trust me, I get how freaky it sounds, but there you have it; you got your leg taken by a guy with a _serious_ mad-on for Booth who wanted nothing more than to ruin his life by making everyone else think he was a killer."

For a moment, Booth thought that Sweets was going to hit the panic button anyway, but instead he simply lay on the bed and stared at Booth, his gaze shifting from apprehensive panic to a more straightforward confusion as he took in Booth's appearance, his body relaxing more and more with each passing second as he processed what was in front of him.

"You're... you're not him..." he said at last, the shock at that revelation obvious in his voice.

"No, I'm not," Booth confirmed, shaking his head as he smiled slightly at Sweets; he just hoped that it was the good kind of shock at learning that he _hadn't_ just been tortured by his friend. "I'm sorry about what happened to you, Sweets... and I hope that you can forgive me for what he did to you because of me."

For a few moments, Sweets simply lay on the bed staring at Booth in silence, until he gave the other man a slight smile.

"He was lying..." he said, lying back on the bed with a relieved expression on his face. "You're _not_ capable of that..."

"And I never will be," Booth said, looking between the two other men in the room with a solemn nod. " _Ever_."

He acknowledged that Angelus had probably told Sweets something of the truth about what _he_ had done during their confrontation- he wouldn't be Angelus if he wasn't twisting the truth-, but this wasn't the time to worry about establishing that kind of distinction; he would never do what Angelus had _done_ , and that was the important thing to establish at this time.

With that said, Booth stood up and walked out of the hospital room; even if Sweets had forgiven him at the moment, the other man was going to need at least a few more days of recovery before he felt confident enough in himself to spend further time with someone who looked like the person who'd taken his leg off.

It was going to take a while for Sweets to get to a point where he could achieve anything like the mobility that he'd had before Angelus's attack, and Booth had a feeling that the guy would require some serious therapy for himself before he felt comfortable evaluating Booth again- even if he believed that Angelus was just a lookalike who'd been lying about everything he claimed that 'Booth' had done, it wouldn't exactly be easy for Sweets to relax in Booth's presence for a long time-, but it was a step in the right direction.

He probably wasn't going to be working cases with Sweets at any point in the future, but he had done what he could to ensure that he wouldn't cut ties with Sweets when the other man thought that he was nothing but a monster.

It was time to attend to the last bit of business he had with the Jeffersonian before he closed the book on this part of his life...

It sucked, but it was what Bones needed to happen; so long as she was safe and could hold on to her understanding of the world as it had been before he'd introduced his crap to her existence, everything else was unimportant.

... _God_ , he hated Angelus; even when the man was dead he could still make things awkward.


	23. The Resolution in the Office

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are; the last chapter of this story- this one was NOT easy, I assure you; getting Brennan's emotional state done to my satisfaction wasn't exactly straightforward-, and I hope that it's been enjoyable reading for all of you

As Booth walked into Bones's office in the Jeffersonian, he was just grateful that he'd managed to get that far without running into anyone else; what he was about to say would be hard enough to say the first time around, but he wanted to be able to say it directly to Bones so that he could get the hardest one out of the way.

"Hey, Bones," he said, smiling slightly at her as he closed the door behind him; the walls being glass might limit the privacy they could get, but anything that gave them a chance to talk without interruption was good right now.

"Booth?" Brennan said, looking at him with an uncertain smile. "How's... everything?"

"Well, the FBI's being pretty good about it all, although that's probably because Cullen and Riley came up with a cover story while we were busy," Booth said, shrugging in what he hoped was a convincingly nonchalant manner. "Cullen's going with our cover story about Angelus being a criminal I put away- we're claiming that even we're not sure who he was; there's a few guys I've dealt with who've died in a manner that they _could_ have simply faked their deaths, and at least a couple of them had the skills and contacts to do what Angelus was trying to pull here-, but there's still going to be a few awkward questions; I'm suspended for a week or so until the enquiry's sorted out to everyone's satisfaction."

"Enquiry?" Bones said, looking at him with a slight trace of fear. "Could you-?"

"With my track record and Cullen backing up my story?" Booth interrupted, smiling reassuringly at his partner. "Trust me, Bones; I am _not_ losing my job over this."

"That's... that's good," Bones said, smiling at him before she suddenly looked more awkward. "Booth..."

"What?" Booth asked, smiling slightly at her. "Something wrong?"

"I was wondering..." Bones said, before she looked more directly at him. "Now that Kathy's _here_... would you have any objections to us burying her here?"

"What?" Booth said, looking at her in surprise; he was almost ashamed to admit that, amid the chaos of everything he'd had to deal with over the last couple of days, he'd virtually forgotten that he still had to deal with his sister's relocated remains.

"Well, I acknowledge that there's probably some importance in her being buried back in Ireland for you, but on the other hand, given that you're the only person left alive who would particularly care about where she rests-" Bones began.

"Bones," Booth said, holding up a hand to smile at her. "That'd be... well, so long as you can come up with a good explanation for it all, that'd be great."

There would probably be some issues about the dates he'd need to leave on the gravestone to sort out when the time came; should he put Kathy's real birth and death dates on the stone, leave it blank, or alter the dates to fit his current physical age?-, but he'd worry about those later; right now, he had more important matters to attend to.

"Anyway," he said, swallowing slightly as he looked at his partner, "now that Angelus is... dust... well, I'll be applying for a transfer-"

" _What_?" Bones said, standing up from her seat as she looked at him. "But-"

"Look, I get that you handled yourself all right this time around," Booth began- if he was going to break things off with them, he didn't want Bones to go away with incorrect assumptions-, "but this is for your own good-"

" _How_ is this 'for my own good'?" Bones said, walking around the desk to glare at him. "Angelus is dead, there's no possibility of the First bringing him back, and you said yourself that it wouldn't want to draw too much attention to itself by alerting anyone else from your past; there _is_ no danger from it-"

"This isn't just about your safety from that part of my life, Bones, it's about your ability to cope with what I brought _into_ your life," Booth said, looking uncomfortably at her- why did the women he loved always make it so hard for him to do the right thing for them?- even as he forced himself to continue speaking. "I just thought... well, after everything that's happened... look, Bones, I pretty much _represent_ everything you've spent your life believing didn't exist-"

"I don't put that much stock in psychology, Booth; remember?" Bones said, smiling at him in a slightly tremulous manner that Booth didn't need his long experience with Doctor Temperance Brennan to know that she was trying to say something to both of them rather than just him. "Besides, you're making a simple yet incorrect assumption."

"Which is?" Booth asked, looking uncertainly at her; he'd been able to convince himself that Buffy needed more than he had on offer, but Bones had come to mean so much more to him in so many different ways...

"You're assuming that I still define everything based on my belief in science," Bones said, shrugging slightly as she smiled at him, her tone of voice shockingly casual as she spoke the words that contradicted so many things Booth had thought he knew about his partner. "I rely on science as a starting point to help me find the answers I'm looking for... but when it fails me, I rely on you."

Booth had no idea what to say about that statement.

The idea that Bones had faith in him was something he'd known ever since the Gravedigger case- she and Hodgins hadn't talked about that incident that much, but that particular detail had been revealed to him while he and Hodgins was having a few drinks-, but the idea that she had _that_ much faith in him...

"Really?" he said, looking at her with a smile. "Uh... thanks, Bones."

"'Thanks'?" Bones repeated, looking back at him with a slightly teasing smile, her previously pointed stare relaxing as she spoke.

"Well, it's a bit inadequate, I know, but it's all I can think of-" Booth began.

"Talking of you... thinking about things," Bones said, holding up her hand with an expression on her face that suggested that she had just come to a decision in her own little internal conflict; whatever she had decided to say, she wanted to say it as soon as possible. "What Angelus said... about how you wouldn't leave me unless you _had_ to..."

"He meant it," Booth said, knowing where his partner was about to go with that line of questioning, even as he held up his hand to stop her later protest at the apparent contradiction. "But that's why I felt that I should leave; I don't want to-"

"You won't," Bones said, looking firmly at him for a moment. "You _won't_ affect my life, Booth; this is a change, but it's a far less drastic one than the one you're proposing."

For a moment, the two maintained their gaze before Bones's stare faltered as she looked down, swallowing slightly as though fighting down an urge.

"Bones?" Booth said, all thoughts of his own departure forgotten as he looked at the lost, shaken expression on her face. "What... what is it?"

"In your past..." the anthropologist said, before she shook her head and looked firmly at him. "Did you love them?"

"Did I love... who?" Booth asked, looking uncertainly at her.

"Buffy and Cordelia," Bones finished, still staring intently at him. "Did you love them?"

There were so many possible responses that Booth could give to that question, starting with the point that his old relationships were none of her business and progressing from there, but right now, as he looked at the woman before him, with that same strange mixture of strength and weakness that had made him fall in love with her so long ago, he knew that there was only one response he could give.

"I did," he said, nodding in acknowledgement of Bones's comment, only to hold up a hand to halt her as she turned to leave; if she wanted to avoid this issue after raising it, she was going to fail in that goal spectacularly.

"But..." he said, taking a deep breath before he finally said the words he'd been waiting to say for longer than even he knew, "that doesn't mean I don't love you."

 _I love you_...

As moments of confession went, this probably ranked as one of the most inconvenient and inappropriate moments of all time, but considering Booth's past romantic track record, he supposed that he was just continuing a theme of making confessions at awkward moments.

"The thing about love, Bones," he said as he looked at her, praying that she'd accept this explanation even if he knew that it wasn't one of his best, "is that, when it's deep enough- when it's _true_ enough-, you never _really_ get over it, even if circumstances force you to at least try and move on. No matter how hard I try, a part of me will always love Buffy, and a part of me will always miss Cordelia... but, in a life that's lasted almost three hundred years, I can honestly say that- with the obvious exceptions of my sons and my sister-, I have only truly _loved_ three people... and you're the third."

"Not even Rebecca?" Bones asked, looking at him in surprise. "But... you asked her to marry you-"

"Loving someone doesn't mean you're _in love_ with them, Bones; there's a whole different level of feeling there that this isn't the time or place to be getting into," Booth said, waving a hand dismissively even as he kept his focus on his partner. "Loving someone could progress to the point where you're _in love_ with them... but, when you know you're in love with someone, no amount of time apart or disagreements can change that fundamental fact."

"But..." Bones said, shaking her head as she looked at him in confusion, a part of her obviously wanting to believe him even as she resorted to her knee-jerk reaction when faced with complicated emotions by trying to avoid them. "You said yourself that your feelings for _them_ have changed-"

"Angelus didn't lie that I'd loved them, but he also didn't lie when he said I'd never leave you," Booth said (He couldn't believe he was using something _Angelus_ had said to support his argument, but right now he'd try anything to get his point across). "I only left them because my curse made it too dangerous for me to be around Buffy and Cordelia died; the first issue doesn't apply any more, and as for the second... well, I think we can both agree that neither of us are going to die any time soon, so everything that drove me to leave them isn't going to apply _here_."

"But you changed while you were with them-" Brennan began, shaking her head slightly as though trying not to focus on the fact that he had just admitted that he loved _her_.

"I've changed while I'm with you and you've changed while you're with me; so what?" Booth asked, shrugging slightly as he looked at her. "People affect each other when they're in relationships, Bones; the scale of the changes can vary, but every good relationship depends on each partner bringing out the best in the other and helping them to grow as people. Buffy helped inspire me to start helping people rather than just skulking in the shadows like I had been since I left Darla while I helped inspire her to accept her destiny as the Slayer, Cordelia helped me get back in touch with people- before I started working with her in L.A. everyone I spent time with only knew me because they knew Buffy- while I gave her a greater purpose in life than being the richest girl in Sunnydale, and then, after I'd spent a few years alone in the army and the FBI... well, here you are."

"And... how did _I_ help you grow?" Brennan asked, looking uncertainly at him, immediate emotional concerns momentarily unimportant in the face of her confusion about that particular issue.

"You helped me recognise that there's a beauty in the future and the past that we can bring together rather than requiring it to be one or the other," Booth said, smiling slightly at her as he spoke. "In a world where I spent so long relying on the skills I'd always used in the past- aim, intuition, knowledge of how killers think, beating the crap out of the other guy, that kind of thing-, you helped me understand more about the modern world in a way that I wouldn't have been able to before, giving me someone to protect who could also protect me... we each came into this mess as equals who could make each other stronger, rather than coming in with one of us obviously 'superior' to the other in some areas."

"You taught me how to understand people-" Brennan began.

"You _understood_ people, you just didn't know how translate what you understood into something that you could understand; that's not the same thing," Booth said, correcting her with a tender smile. "The point is, Bones, that each of us came into this relationship with _some_ understanding of what the other one could bring to this dynamic even if we couldn't handle it ourselves; all we've done since then is help each other grow and develop, but that just means we're better suited for a relationship now compared to how we were then."

"Actually, that's something else I was thinking about," Bones said, looking at him with a suddenly renewed sense of discomfort about her. "Everyone from your time as Angel... well... now that they know you're alive-"

"They don't, Bones," Booth interrupted. "Maybe Angelus would have attracted some attention, but we've staked him and nobody else would know what he looked like; I might need to be a bit more careful than I would be normally for the next few weeks or so in case I attract the wrong kind of attention, but there's no reason for anyone from that time to think I'm still alive, and Riley's not in regular enough contact with them to bother doing it himself."

"Oh," Bones said, smiling briefly at the thought of what he'd said before she focused on more immediate issues. "But... well, if you had the chance to go back to them-"

"I wouldn't take it," Booth said firmly.

"You wouldn't?" Brennan said, looking at him in surprise. "But if you still love Buffy-"

"Circumstances arose that meant that we could never hope to be together back then, and I moved on from that point in my life," Booth said, looking solemnly at her as he walked over to take her hand, looking her directly in the eyes as he spoke. "Even if those circumstances don't apply any more, Buffy and I have gone our separate ways since we were last together; if I'd found a way to stay with her at the time, I would have taken it, but as it is, who I am now has no place in her life, any more than she has a place in mine."

"You'd have stayed with her?" Bones asked.

"If I'd had the chance at the time, yes, but that doesn't matter; what matters is that I'm here _now_ ," Booth said, rolling his eyes in momentary exasperation before he looked resolutely at her. "If you'd been able to, wouldn't you have stayed with Sully?"

"That's not the same-" Brennan began.

"It's _exactly_ the same," Booth said, looking firmly at her. "You were happy together until Sully made a choice, and it set off a chain of events that helped you realise that you couldn't be with him. There may be a more supernatural element involved here, but the same rule applies; someone, somewhere, made a choice, and that choice led me to a point where Buffy, Cordelia and I had to go our separate ways, just as someone made a choice that led to you and Sully going in different directions. What brought us here doesn't matter, Bones; what matters is that we're here now, and what you want to happen between us is up to you."

For a moment, the two of them simply looked silently at each other, their hands still joined, until Booth reached up with the hand that wasn't holding Brennan's to lightly stroke the side of her face.

"Look, I'm not saying this is going to be easy, Bones," he said, brushing a slightly loose tendril of hair out of her face as he stared at her. "I get that we have our differences, I get that we don't agree on a lot of things, and I get that I'm asking a lot of you to accept everything about me... but I also know that, if you want me to stay, I'll stay, and, if you didn't want a relationship, I'd back off... but I'd be here for when you did want me, no matter what happened in the intervening time."

For a moment, as they stared at each other, Booth could almost see the conflict inside his partner's eyes, the part of her that always run in the past warring with the part of her that wanted to stay, all coming together in that incredible combination of strength and fragility that he would do anything to protect while knowing that she would always be willing to protect him in the process...

"So..." he said, looking at her with a tender, uncertain smile. "What'll it be?"

After a moment of almost torturous silence, Bones leaned forward and met his lips with hers, the two relaxing into the kiss as though they had always been meant to be there and everything leading up to that moment had been nothing but practise, the moment when everything in their past ceased to matter as they finally came together...

They might come from different backgrounds and represent virtually opposing views of how the world around them worked, but they were here now; as far as the man who was now known as Seeley Booth was concerned, that was all that mattered.


End file.
